Living with Age: The Elderly in America
Is 70 the new 60, or the new 70? How are the elderly, defined by the Census Bureau as those over 65, living? Jerry Halberstadt proposes to undertake a series of photographic documentary studies that will help put a face to the facts and figures. Sponsors are welcome.
I will portray individuals, families, and communities. I will show people in their homes or wherever they may be, in independent living situations, in assisted living, and in nursing homes. I will show them caring for each other, being cared for, or being neglected. I will show them at work and at play, and with their children and grandchildren. I will show them isolated and in their communities. The work will bring understanding and awareness of the issues and opportunities of aging in America, including innovative varieties of family and community life.
According to the Census Bureau, people are living longer and healthier lives. But heart disease, cancer, and stroke remain the leading causes of death. And 80 percent have at least one chronic health condition while 50 percent have at least two. Older people are limited in their activities by chronic deseases including arthritis, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory disorders. Nevertheless the rates of disability and functional limitation are declining. The "elderly" covers a wide variety of experiences: age, gender, race, ethnic group, financial means, and health status are only a few of the important differences among the elderly.
Thus, the elderly and their families are constantly striving to maintain their situation, or they are seeking to adopt and adapt to new patterns. When people can no longer live independently, do they seek assistance to remain at home in their community, or do they join with others for mutual support, or do they enter an assisted living or nursing facility? What new patterns of relationship and support emerge? If they go into an assisted living community, for example, can they retain family and community ties? Can they develop new peer relationships of friendship and support?
Photographs and specific topical essays will be posted on the internet, and may be exhibited in galleries or institutions, or published as a book.
Sponsors and partners for this undertaking are welcome. I am seeking partners with settings or facilities where I can photograph. Photos and essays can be licensed for informational and promotional uses. For example, an assisted living facility or chain would be able to use a series based on their own facility to promote a specific location or for national use. Photographs could be posted to the sponsor's internet site, used in slide shows and promotional literature, and displayed in the sponsor's site or in community exhibits. An exhibition of photographs can be an excellent educational and public relations device to encourage community awareness.
All articles on "elderly" http://photoluminations.com/drupal/taxonomy/term/17
Living: Assisted http://photoluminations.com/drupal/node/25
Photos of Life in an Assisted Living Community http://photoluminations.com/assignments/age/assisted.html
See: photo, "The Opening" http://www.photoluminations.com/index.html
see photo, friends: http://www.photoluminations.com/assignments/index.html
Sources:
We the American Elderly. Bureau of the Census.1993
65+ 1996 report http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p23-190/p23-190.html
He, Wan et al, US Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P23-209 65+ in the Unitd States: 2005, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2005.
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Comments
The "Elderly"?
The feedback I have gotten on "The Elderly in America" focuses on the choice of the word "elderly" because it seems like no one accepts that as their status in life. To emphasize this point is a column "On Language" by Jack Rosenthal. He reviews a number of terms used to describe people of a certain age, and concludes that no one term can encompass the wide variety of experience. People are living older and healthier; or poorer and sicker. Terms like "wellderly" and "illderly" (both new to my vocabulary) attempt to capture a single dimension. We don't have the words yet to describe what Rosenthal calls "our new age of age." Source: Jack Rosenthal, July 22, 2007, NY Times Magazine
Does anyone have any better ideas than "elderly" for my project?? How do you like "Living with Age" as a title? And maybe "in America" is a bit grandiose, at least it will be Essex County in Mass. where I start.
The Elderly
"A generation goes, a generation comes..." (--Ecclesiastes 1:4)
"Elderly" is probably the best word... it's better than "seniors" or "old." An elder is regarded with great respect among the Dine' (Navajo), because she or he has, one hopes, finally reached the stage in life of wisdom, of true maturity. Grandmothers and grandfathers are enormously important to the younger generations.
Among the traditional American Indians who I know, most of the elderly are active (unless seriously ill)--no one thinks about "retiring,"despite the ailments of aging. And, traditionally, most are living in extended family households, cared for at home by their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
I think that age segregation in the U.S. (and elsewhere in the world) is a sad comment on the cultural estrangement among the generations within our society.
Conflicts occur within all families, in all cultures. But the tendency to separate the elderly from the rest of our society (with some exceptions), and the need for "wealth" to survive within this society, and the growing gap between rich and poor, all combine to make becoming an elder an often painful and lonely time of life, when it should be a time of fulfillment and peace as life begins to draw toward, one hopes, a good old age and its end.
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