“Us Two Together”. Creating an Autobiographical Visual Narrative about Dementia

Abstract

‘Graphic medicine’ or ‘graphic pathography’, a subgenre of the autobiographical comic, enables patients or caregivers to relate personal encounters with disease, mostly to process these experiences. When I set out to create the graphic narrative Wij twee samen (“Us Two Together”, 2015), which deals with my father’s develop­ing dementia and slow decline, the goal was to attract a broader audience’s inter­est. By using strategies and techniques that bridge the gap between fine arts, litera­ture, design and comics, the autobiographical storyline evolved into a work of art that transcends the visual diary.