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A Caregiver’s Journal

GAIL REBHAN: AGING PYRAMID ATLANTIC GALLERY SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND DECEMBER 2, 2006-JANUARY 13, 2007 Poetry and art memorializing the dying reached its apex in the nineteenth century, before medical breakthroughs and the rise of youth culture made aging unfashionable. By contrast, with more youthful victims of AIDS and breast cancer, ailing octogenarians are rarely depicted in contemporary art. Repudiating this trend, Gail Rebhan's exhibition of giclec prints, "Aging," charts the downward are of her father Herman Rebhan's journey into debilitating old age. With permission from her father--a Polish immigrant, observant Jew, and, in his prime, a prominent international labor leader Rebhan exposes his experience of aging to the public, breaking taboos concerning "successful aging" as well as discussing family matters with strangers. Rebhan situates her father's experience within a larger social context, challenging the "preferred depiction of old age ... as a time of active leisure" that "typically portray[s] ... seniors as healthy and independent" and conceals "the debilitating effects of dementia and loss of control over one's body ...." (1) In these intricately layered prints created between 2002 and 2006, Rebhan digitally combines portraits of her father with text and images of objects (calendars, prescriptions, etc.) made on a flatbed scanner. Rebhan photographed her father in various settings--outdoors, in his bedroom in her home, in the emergency room, and eventually in an assisted living residence. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the large diptych portrait 1994-2004 (2004), a proud, erect, smiling Rebhan faces the camera while a decade later he looks away--a slouching, frowning figure with an aluminum walker. His transformation is reframed by a bold, digital collage border that also functions as a key and narrative commentary: it includes cropped life-sized images of shirts, pants, and belts along with a textual chart of statistics documenting his physical transformation. The glowing montage Decline (2003) conveys spiritual dimensions that belie its clinical title. Formal elements and technique invite alternate readings. In the right foreground, like an aging Indian god with multiple arms (one gripping a cane, two holding a walker), her father moves toward a bright green, sunlit lawn led by a half-visible figure in a wheelchair on a path into the uncertain future (blurry upper left). Gradated focus and contrasts--clear/fuzzy, colorful/muted--imply transition and movement. In an uplifting counterpoint to his downwardly mobile future, the rhythm of diagonals reinforce the iconic reading of three arms and a single body (foreground), moving to the left and upward toward a distant background figure. …