My Husband Won't Tell Me His First Name

Virgil DiBiase: My husband won't tell me his first name

Access Gallery

909 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204

March 5-April 2, 2021

Admission: Free

Review by Mary Grace Bernard

Dr. Virgil DiBiase, MD, is a full-time neurologist and part-time photographer based in rural Indiana. He has exhibited his black and white photographs nationally, including at the Rangefinder Gallery in Chicago, the Strimbu Gallery at Valparaiso University, the Workspace Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Providence Center for Photographic Arts, and the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, just to name a few. His typical subject matter is the people and spaces of rural Indiana. Photographic series such as My Indiana illustrate farm life, classic Americana, and the quotidian. For his project My husband won't tell me his first name, however, DiBiase chose to combine his medical profession with his photographic practice.

Virgil DiBiase, Untitled from My husband won't tell me his first name, 2020, platinum palladium prints on Legion Revere rag paper, 11 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

What emerged is a series of portraits and landscapes that exhibit what (dis)ability scholars Rosemarie Garland-Thompson and Tobin Siebers call the “visual rhetorics of disability” and “disability aesthetics”—two concepts that relate to viewers’ body and mind sensations when looking at photographs of (dis)abled bodies and minds. While DiBiase is ultimately a doctor with a medical perspective, which obscures the direct connection between the viewer and viewed, the artist incorporates these two concepts of (dis)ability visual culture into his photographs to provide art audiences with an empathetic understanding of his patients’ body, but mostly mind, experiences. [1]

Dr. DiBiase’s medical specialty is dementia: a group of conditions characterized by impairment of at least two brain functions, such as memory loss and judgment. [2] The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's disease. According to DiBiase, if we live long enough, one in three of us will develop the disease, while one in two of us will care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease. [3] As a result of working with a multitude of people with dementia (all of them elderly), the doctor found that using his photography skills brought him and his care-receivers closer together. As the artist explains, he goes to his patients’ homes, spends a few hours with them, and takes pictures: “It’s a more social visit, less stressful, we know each other better and I can do my job a little better.” [4] Culminating from these visits are photographs capturing people with dementia in and around their homes completing daily activities while talking with DiBiase.

[Image 2] Virgil DiBiase, Untitled from My husband won't tell me his first name, 2020, platinum palladium prints on Legion Revere rag paper, 11 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

At their homes, the doctor takes care-receivers’ portraits in addition to photographs of the various landscapes and architectures he observes during his visit. For his landscape abstractions, the artist creates images of faded memories, clouded recollections, and hazy flashbacks by blurring multiple photographs together, experimenting with the lens’ focus, playing with light, and capturing moments in movement. As contextual accompaniments, he often includes quotes, such as “My husband won’t tell me his first name” followed by the patient’s first name and their diagnosis. [5] For example, in his 2020 artwork Untitled (Image 2), DiBiase blurs a photograph of trees from the perspective of looking upwards, overlaid with the silhouette of a gable-roofed house and a flying bird. The photograph is then paired with the quote:

            “When my wife stares at me and talks too much I see spheres and animals and get lost in the woods.” — Harry, Dementia.

[Image 3] Virgil DiBiase, Untitled from My husband won't tell me his first name, 2020, platinum palladium prints on Legion Revere rag paper, 11 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

This photograph, in addition to a few others from his My husband won't tell me his first name project (such as Image 3), is a visual representation of how thoughts, memories, and visions may appear from a patient’s perspective: unfocused and blurred with missing information. They are also examples of disability aesthetics. Siebers explains “disability aesthetics” is an aesthetic taste that defies harmony, bodily integrity, and health as standards of beauty. [6] In other words, disability aesthetics invites the broken, dissonant, and jarring while simultaneously arguing for their beauty. Because DiBiase focuses on people with dementia, his photographs are illustrations of the broken mind. They present windows into beauty that challenge traditional notions of aesthetic taste, such as symmetry, clarity, and ease. As a result, DiBiase’s photographs invite viewers to experience a moment of discomfort to better understand his patients’ bodies and minds. Since human feeling is central to aesthetic history, the My husband won't tell me his first name photographs elicit powerful emotions from an audience.

[Image 4] Virgil DiBiase, Untitled from My husband won't tell me his first name, 2020, platinum palladium prints on Legion Revere rag paper, 11 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

In addition to utilizing disability aesthetics, however, the artist also implements the visual rhetorics of disability. Garland-Thompson defines “visual rhetorics of disability” as photographic images of (dis)abled subjects that act as persuasive figures and have the power to elicit a response from the viewer. [7] In short, photographs of (dis)abled bodies and minds construct the subjects they represent as they depict them; they do not always present a transparent window into reality. Nevertheless, DiBiase uses visual rhetorics of disability to create visceral awareness of how dementia works within the body and mind. In his Untitled (Image 4), the artist depicts a woman staring at a thousand puzzle pieces on a large table. Each puzzle piece is seemingly a symbolic representation of the thousands of memories/thoughts/recollections in the subject’s body and mind that she is trying to put back together. As a result, viewers are able to partially understand how certain people with dementia live within their bodies and minds.

Ultimately, DiBiase’s photographs put bodies and minds in relation to (dis)abled bodies and minds. As queer and (dis)abilty scholar Alison Kafer shows in her work Feminist, Queer, Crip “disability is experienced in and through relationships; it does not occur in isolation.” [8] The product of social relations—where (dis)abled can only be understood in relation to “able-minded” and “able-bodied”—creates hierarchical divisions of bodies and minds in order to “legitimate an unequal distribution of resources, status, and power within a biased social and architectural environment.” [9]

Mary Grace (MG) Bernard is a (dis)abled emerging artist, independent curator, and art writer living and working in New Orleans and Denver. She lives with cystic fibrosis, a chronic illness that informs her daily art and writing practices. She combines art theory and art practice in an effort to break down binaries and the relationships between the public and private spheres of experience. MG is the Founder & Director of Femme Salée, an innovative online art journal and zine dedicated to the voices working within exceptional art communities.

[1] DiBiase has constructed these images from his own perspective of what his patients’ might experience, see, feel, etc. While DiBiase attempts to humanize the people he works with, he is nevertheless a doctor with a medical perspective, which obscures the direct connection between the viewer and viewed. In other words, while the artist is bringing awareness to dementia and its negative effects on the body/mind, viewers are unable to have a direct connection with the disabled people themselves. They experience the subjects through a doctor’s point of view.

[2] Mayo Clinic Staff, “Dementia,” Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dementia/symptoms-causes/syc-20352013?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=abstract&utm_content=Dementia&utm_campaign=Knowledge-panel. Accessed February 11, 2021.

[3] Aline Smithson, “Virgil DiBiase: My Husband Won’t Tell Me His First Name,” Lenscratch: Fine Art Photography Daily (November 19, 2020): www.lenscratch.com/2019/11/virgil-dibiase/. Accessed February 11, 2021.

[4] Ibid.

[5] The quotes are taken from conversations with hosts during the artist’s visits.

[6] Tobin Siebers, “Introducing Disability Aesthetics,” Disability Aesthetics (University of Michigan Press, 2010), 1.

 [7] Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, “Seeing the Disabled: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography,” The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 335.

[8] Alison Kafer, “Introduction,” Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 18.

[9] Ibid.