After being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, artist William Utermohlen decided to create a self portrait each year until he was no longer able to draw.
After being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1995, the American-born artist William Utermohlen faced his diagnosis the only way he knew how: by turning to his art. Over the next several years, Utermohlen created a remarkable series of self-portraits, one each year, documenting the slow unraveling of his memory, sense of self, and technical abilities. These paintings, taken together, form a haunting visual diary of a mind slipping away, capturing the fear, confusion, and vulnerability that come with dementia.
At first, Utermohlen’s self-portraits retain much of his earlier style—sharp lines, careful shading, and a strong, searching gaze. But as the years go by, the portraits become more abstract, less detailed, and almost ghostly. The once vivid face blurs and fades, proportions warp, features become indistinct. What’s so powerful is how these changes aren’t just technical mistakes—they’re a window into his lived experience, his struggle to hold onto himself as his own brain betrays him.
Utermohlen’s final self-portraits are heartbreaking in their simplicity. Sometimes little more than a suggestion of eyes or a hint of a mouth, they’re like echoes of a man who knows he’s disappearing but wants to bear witness to his own decline.
83 years ago, top officials of Nazi Germany met at this building in a Berlin suburb to discuss, and ultimately agree on, the extermination of the Jewish people, also known as the “Final Solution”
Eighty three years ago, on a cold January day in 1942, a group of top Nazi officials gathered at a stately villa on the shores of Berlin’s Wannsee lake. The building, now unassuming amid quiet, leafy streets, was the site of one of the most chilling meetings in modern history. Here, over a formal breakfast, high-ranking bureaucrats and SS officers discussed not just the fate of millions of Jews, but the logistics of their systematic extermination—a plan that would become known as the “Final Solution.”
The Wannsee Conference, as it’s called, was both bureaucratic and monstrous in its efficiency. In less than two hours, these men coordinated how to deport and murder Jews across occupied Europe, refining details down to train schedules and legal definitions. No one at the table objected. This meeting didn’t invent the Holocaust, but it formalized its machinery—transforming genocide into official state policy, managed by sober men in suits. The villa still stands today as a memorial and museum, a stark reminder that ordinary offices and elegant homes can be the backdrop for unthinkable evil.
A 10 year old girl in Syria draws what it looked like in her village
Old man at an In-N-Out burger eating with a picture of his wife.
A letter about depression.
A World War II veteran from Belarus sits on a bench as he waits for his comrades at Gorky park during Victory Day in Moscow, Russia. Konstantin’s unit has met at this place every year since WWII finished. This year he was the last living person from the unit
Louise Bundy, mother of serial killer Ted Bundy, wipes away a tear in her dining room in Tacoma, Washington, as she tells him over the phone, “You will always be my precious son.” He was executed minutes later at the Florida State Prison, pronounced dead at 7:16 am on January 24th, 1989.
In the early hours of January 24th, 1989, Louise Bundy sat at her dining room table in Tacoma, Washington, clutching the phone as she spoke to her son for the last time. The clock was ticking down the final minutes of Ted Bundy’s life. On the other end of the line, in a cell at Florida State Prison, Ted waited for the guards to come. Despite everything—the revelations, the headlines, the horror of what he had done—Louise’s words were simple and unmistakably maternal: “You will always be my precious son.”
As she wiped away tears, the weight of years of denial, disbelief, and impossible hope seemed to settle on her shoulders. To the world, Ted Bundy was a monster, a serial killer whose charm had masked unspeakable cruelty and violence. To Louise, he was still the boy she’d raised, the son she’d once protected from questions about his absent father and the glare of public scrutiny. In that moment, her grief was not just for the man her son had become, but for all the lost years and shattered illusions.
At 7:16 am, Ted Bundy was pronounced dead in the electric chair, his life ending in a spectacle watched by crowds outside the prison gates. For Louise Bundy, the finality of his execution was both a public event and a private heartbreak. No matter how much the world recoiled at his name, she could not untangle her love for her son from the man the world had come to know.
Phone message left by a passenger on flight 175
A letter from father to son
Kristina’s Bucket List- The girl on the left is Kristina Chesterman, a 21 year-old nursing student, who had a bucket list for her life that included traveling the world, riding a camel, and flying an airplane. She was hit by a drunk driver while riding her bike home from studying. A few days later, she was pronounced dead. Because Kristina was an organ donor, her heart went to Susan Vieria, a 64 year-old with congestive heart failure who has now vowed to completed every item on Kristina’s Bucket list so that, even though the rest of her will never fulfill her dreams, at least her heart will.
An active shooter alert button in a high school
Dennis Rader with his daughter in 1993 (Picture taken 2 years after he had killed his last victim)
In 1993, Dennis Rader sat for a family photo with his daughter—just an ordinary moment between a father and child, at least on the surface. To anyone looking at the picture, there’s nothing unusual: a proud dad, a smiling daughter, and the familiar backdrop of family life in suburban Kansas. But what no one knew then—not his family, not his church, not his colleagues at City Hall—was that Dennis Rader was also the notorious BTK killer, responsible for the murders of ten people between 1974 and 1991.
What makes this image especially unsettling is its timing. The photo was taken two years after Rader had killed his last known victim, ending a spree that had left the Wichita community gripped with fear and confusion. By 1993, he had fully retreated into the role of husband, father, and community member, all while keeping his double life hidden beneath the surface.
On September 11, 2001 there was one American in space. this is the picture he took from the International Space Station
This photo was taken by a paramedic in 2015 outside of a SoCal hospital. It depicts an ER doctor who stepped outside to cry after losing a 19-year-old patient. Minutes later, the doctor walked back in with his head held high ready to continue working. (
Untitled painting by Adolf Hitler. Depicting a series of doors descending into a abyss with the stares of eyeless men at the front
Related Posts:
