William Utermohlen’s Self-Portraits – Chronicling the Descent Into Alzheimer’s

In the last decade of life artist William Utermohlen made perhaps his most significant contribution to society. He created a series of self-portraits, intentionally chronicling his descent into dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

From the moment in 1995 when Utermohlen, an American artist residing in London, learned he had Alzheimer's until his death in March 2007, he responded with characteristic fashion, his wife Patricia Utermohlen, herself an art historian, noted. "He began to try to understand it by painting," she explained, and with his indomitable creative expression and self-awareness he graphically captured a look inside the mind someone descending into dementia. The interest in his paintings as a chronicle of illness is bittersweet, his wife said in a recent New York Times interview, because it has outstripped the recognition he received even at the height of his notable career.

About Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's, a degenerative brain disease, is the most common form of dementia, a group of conditions that affects memory, mood and behavior. This irreversible disease causes a progressive decline in mental function through gradual changes to the brain and eventually destroys brain cells. Decline in cognitive functioning includes most if not all of the following: memory; ability to generate coherent speech or understand spoken or written language; capacity to plan, make sound judgments and carry out complex tasks; and ability to process and interpret visual information.

Alzheimer's disease affects one in 10 individuals over age 65 and nearly half of those over the age of 85. However, more than 4 percent of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's are under 65, many in their 40's and 50's.

Many Americans do recognize the threat of Alzheimer's, according to a 2006 study by the MetLife Foundation, which reported that outside of cancer there is no other illness people fear more. In fact, those surveyed who were 55 and older feared Alzheimer's even more than cancer.

Source: www.aging.org/i4a/pages/Index.cfm?pageID=2048

Please support the Alzheimer’s Association at www.alz.org or visit to find out more about Alzheimer’s.

I didn't take the photos. I arranged them in a grid in chronological order and labelled them with the year they were created so I can study them better.