Age is a privilege, unless you forget!
Debbie Castro
PhotoIreland
English
Softcover
Edition of 200
84 pages
148 x 210 mm
Debbie Castro describes the process of selecting, editing, and narrating her father’s photography—undertaken with his permission—as an ethical responsibility. What began as a cathartic exploration of curiosity and acceptance regarding her father’s identity has led to a deeper understanding of dementia, allowing her to process the complex emotions experienced when witnessing its impact on a loved one. She acknowledges that the process was often painful, even torturous at times, but ultimately resulted in a sense of acceptance and a strengthened relationship with her father and family.
The central question Castro explores is: age is a privilege—but what happens when memory fades?
This question underpins her ongoing project Age is a Privilege, Unless You Forget!, which emerges from her broader practice examining mental and physical health, with a focus on themes such as vulnerability and control. In this body of work, she closely investigates the far-reaching effects of Alzheimer’s, using her own life and experiences as a point of departure.
(Source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/age-is-a-privilege-unless-you-forget-debbie-castro)
About the Artist
Debbie Castro is a conceptual documentary artist whose work navigates the fragile terrain between memory and forgetting, presence and absence, permanence and impermanence. Working primarily in photography but extending into moving image, text, and installation, Castro transforms images into tactile, physical encounters that evoke the texture of memory and the emotional residue of lived experience. Her practice engages psychoanalytic ideas, particularly Freud’s notion of the death instinct (Thanatos) — the drive toward disintegration, return, and forgetting. Dementia, paralysis, and displacement are not merely subjects but metaphors for this pull. Creation itself — archiving, filming, and re-authoring memory — becomes an act of Eros, the life instinct: asserting presence, cultivating intimacy, and reframing loss as connection.
Alongside her artistic practice, Castro is an educator and facilitator, leading workshops and mentoring emerging photographers to cultivate confidence, critical insight, and a personal visual language. Through a practice both intimate and expansive, Debbie Castro creates spaces for reflection — where memory, loss, and the human condition are explored with clarity, compassion, and conceptual depth.
https://www.debbiecastro.com/
(Source: https://www.debbiecastro.com/)
About the Publisher
PhotoIreland grows the reputation of Irish artists globally through a 360 degree support system and platform for contemporary photography, activated through a diversity of projects. These include events such as PhotoIreland Festival and Halftone print fair amongst others; resources such as the PhotoIreland Collection, a specialised research library of photobooks, and Ireland’s Art Bookshop, The Library Project; via publishing with projects such as OVER Journal and TLP Editions; professional development support through networking and consultancy opportunities; and empowering early and mid-career photographers via our international partnerships, most relevantly through Creative Europe co-funded platforms such as FUTURES and Parallel.
https://photoireland.org/
(Source: https://photoireland.org/about-photoireland/)
