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- Home from the Hospital
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- Moments After She Passed
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- Hospice Care
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- Cherry Garcia
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- Left Behind
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- Theresa Crying
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- A Son Comforts his Father
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- Pallbearers
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- One Day Later
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- A Beautiful Morning
Edward Boches
Slowly at First
For the last two years, my 87-year-old Mom, Gloria Boches Abramson, had been housebound as her physical condition slowly deteriorated. In May of 2018, pneumonia sent her to the ICU and left her even weaker, her lungs and heart both compromised.
Despite having all of her mental faculties and sense of humor, she decided enough was enough. She rejected the hospital’s recommendation for rehab and opted instead for hospice care. She was ready and eager to die, but determined to die at home.
When I asked Mom if I could document her final days as a way to both witness her courage and confront my own fear of losing her, she agreed. She had been an artist herself — a painter, illustrator, and musician — and knew that this was important to me.
In hospice care, she started to improve, and we both thought this project might go on for six months. But then suddenly, her health took a turn for the worse, and in a matter of days it was over.
Slowly at First documents my Mom’s last month on earth and all the emotions it triggered. More importantly, it helped me process the experience of losing someone I loved.
Artist Bio
For over 30 years, Edward Boches was an award winning copywriter, creative director and chief innovation officer at Mullen (now MullenLowe), an ad agency he helped define, shape and build.
Upon retiring in in 2013, he turned his creative energies to teaching and ultimately to documentary photography, where his primary interest lies in exploring how contemporary America lives, works and plays.
Recently, in response to the divisive economic and political climate, Boches has sought out communities and subcultures that bring people together, photographing urban skate parks, hip hop dance crews, inner city boxing gyms and his own extended family.
In spring 2018, the first chapter of his ongoing project Seeking Glory, which celebrates the courage and strength it takes to be a fighter, opened as a solo show at the Griffin Museum’s SoWa gallery. Other work has been exhibited at the Griffin Museum in Winchester and the Providence Center for Photographic Arts; published in the Lowell Sun, Stand Magazine, and the Social Documentary Network; and featured on numerous websites in support of the arts and social justice.
Contact Edward Boches