Alex Ten Napel October 6, 2010

M. de Graaff, Amsterdam 1998

Alex Ten Napel (b. 1958, Holland) studied at the School for Photography in The Hague. His work is frequently published in Dutch and foreign magazines and newspapers. Photos from the Water Portraits series were selected for the Photographic Portrait Prize 2006, the National Portrait Gallery, London; Prix Photographique BMW-Paris Photo. He has exhibited his work in New York, Moscow, Paris and Miami. Alex is currently based in Amsterdam.

About the Photograph:

“I began this project about Alzheimer’s in 1996 wanting to show the way that it affects people’s personal life and manifests itself in the human face. The portraits were published in a book and shown in an exhibition on the walls of the hospital were they lived. When the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease has smashed the mask of identity, human existence is there right for you and you can see it in its face. To see the decay of the inner self so close moved me and inspired me to make the portraits. The woman in the picture is the same. There are two years in between. When life was hard for me during the project I used to visit her. A chat always cheered me up. “