25 November – 29 December 2013 / Bensoussan Han (Thessaloniki) Place: Bensoussan Han (6 Edessis St., Ano Ladadika, tel.: +30 2313 318212) Opening hours: Th-Su 11.00-19.00  Memories tend to fade away. But how does it look like if they never come back, no matter how hard you may try? What if the familiar becomes alien? Inside the rooms of Bensoussan Han the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography presents the exhibition “Alzheimer’s: A Quiet Story, 2012” of Arabella Plouviez. The building holds many memories, since it used to be a khan in the 1920’s and later changed into an exotic food shop, a spice shop and many more, adding itself to the city’s collective memory. The exhibition is a production of the University of Sunderland and is presented as part of the Parallel Program of the PhotoBiennale. Through the confusion of Alzheimer’s disease, the everyday becomes out of reach, the immediate gets lost and the individual works hard to understand the confusion of others. This work takes a domestic environment that has been lived in for a lifetime and the medium of photography that we so often use as our memory to explore some of the ways in which our brains get lost through this illness. The works are not overtly about the process of memory loss; through the relationship between the images, which explore the faded glory of a well-loved home, and the text, which through the ambiguity of the single word provides a multitude of apparent meanings but also no clarity to the message, each piece challenges the viewer to experience the distance to the present that Alzheimer’s can bring. ———————————————————————————- Arabella Plouviez Professor Arabella Plouviez is Head of Photography at the University of Sunderland, running this small but dynamic department, which provides BA, MA and PhD level study in practice-based contemporary photography. Arabella has exhibited and published her photographic work both nationally and internationally. Her work involves the combining of image and text to visualise ideas and issues and the works are researched through working with different communities of people. Specifically, her work has explored areas from mental illness and criminality to Alzheimer’s disease and the representation of women. Her recent works also consider photography in the socially networked age. Arabella has, with colleagues, been instrumental in setting up a photography research centre at the University of Sunderland, the Northern Centre of Photography, and within that a regional development agency, North East Photography Network (NEPN), which encourages and engages the development of debate around high quality, critically engaged photography. www.photography-at-sunderland.co.uk

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