Embracing Aging: Press Release

PRESS RELEASE


Contact: Travis Bible, Museum Assistant

Rosenberg Library

409-763-8854, ext. 125



For Immediate Release

6 January 2012

Embracing Aging Photography Exhibit Opens

at Rosenberg Library

The Rosenberg Library Museum is proud to present a new photography exhibit entitled Embracing Aging currently on display in Harris Gallery through the end of March 2012. The show is a collaborative effort between the Library and the Galveston Reads program. Galveston Reads is a community-wide book club that encourages unity through literature. This year’s book is the best-selling Still Alice by Lisa Genova, which follows the struggles and triumphs of a woman who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Embracing Aging features works by accomplished local photographers Barbara Pursley and Marilyn Brodwick. Both artists spotlight aging and present images that invoke powerful emotions and draw viewers in for a closer look to see the beauty in ‘ordinary’ people. Pursley and Brodwick will speak at the library on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 6:00 p.m. during Galveston Art Walk. The event is free and open to the public (please enter the library through the ground floor doors).

Barbara Pursley’s black and white photographs are taken from her book Embracing the Moment: An Alzheimer’s Memoir. In it, Pursley shares the experience of becoming her mother’s caregiver after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Her photographs depict a bitter-sweet journey through the declining stages of the disease, and offered her a way of coping with the difficulty of being a caregiver. Not only did photography help Pursley preserve a moment in time, it also gave her a way to connect with her mother.

The Embracing Aging exhibit also features color photographs by Marilyn Spievak Brodwick that have never before been seen by the public. Her portraits focus the viewers’ attention to the beauty—and occasionally the pain—of each subject. Brodwick met many of her subjects on the streets and “tried to sense the person behind the mask of age” before taking any pictures. Like Pursley, Brodwick feels that her camera connects her to her subjects. She believes that “When you look at the outside of a person, you don’t see the life. The way into the fullness and beauty of life may be a wrinkled hand or the sadness or fierce gleam of an eye.”

With longer life-expediency rates and an aging population, health problems like Alzheimer’s disease and dementia now touch many more lives than in years past. Please join the Rosenberg Library as it offers a forum to highlight this important issue. Additional information about this and other Galveston Reads events can be found on the Galveston Reads website: http://galvestonreads.org/events/events.htm