The last year dying with Louise Bourgeois by Alex Van Gelder

“I first met Louise Bourgeois in the '80s at Le Select, the Parisian bar frequented by American writers. She was waiting for her governess, Susie Cooper, and I had just flown in from Africa. We started talking, and I took both ladies to my house at Les Gobelins to show them the African art I had brought back. I have a long-lived passion for African art and had started exporting it to collectors in Europe. Louise was impressed. Before leaving for New York, Louise offered me the opportunity to follow her, as my introduction to the underground movement. I decided to first go back to Africa, but we did continue to meet on a regular basis. Encouraged, I started working seriously as a photographer around the start of the new millennium.”

“At one of our debriefs, I showed Louise some of my work on graveyards. She said, "Wonderful." We decided to work together, and she became my muse. I went to New York, and we worked together with intensity for a whole year. We bonded over terminal illnesses, and we knew this would be our last work to be seen. I was diagnosed with the same illness that Louise's mother had passed away from; hence, she was reliving her final days through my own. It was an intense time, as we were both very ill and knew we had limited time to leave something meaningful behind. The following series has been chosen for Author from that year when we worked together so closely. She died in 2010, and I survived, miraculously. However, the images of Louise will live forever, and I think we truly did capture something unique together.”

— Alex Van Gelder

Images by Alex van Gelder

Interview by Oona Chanel