NAKED

2017 -Present 

Since about the time I turned 70, I realized I’m no longer perceived as interesting or particularly astute. There are reasons for this. I’m more easily distracted than I used to be. I have my share of memory failures and I move slower - in addition to other less visible signs of my age (currently 79). Simultaneously there are profoundly good things happening - I care more deeply about other people and find more ways to let them know I value them. My insistence that others think like me has softened. I believe I’m smarter and my political anger is more precise. 

My conclusion is that I seem less interesting and intelligent now. It’s because of the way my body looks, how I carry myself and other telltale signs of aging. It’s not because I’m genuinely less than I was “before.”

I began to work with these feelings by looking closely at other old women. I started to photograph their faces, especially their eyes and mouths, making highly magnified sculpted prints. But after a while I felt I was missing something, and thought that whatever I was looking for would be more apparent in photographs of the women nude. That was a revelation! There is so much to learn about old women by seeing them NAKED.

To my eye, these well worn bodies are rich and beautiful. We see women’s stories embedded in their flesh. Ultimately these pictures cause us to confront loss and death; this is what it is to be human. When there’s no agenda, seeing another person nude is profound. 

Faces are not included in the photographs because I want to see what each woman’s body reveals. Faces divert our attention from all else because we’re genetically programmed to look at them, so I don’t photograph above the neck.

There is magic in acknowledging and giving old women the interest and appreciation our culture reserves for the young. If this isn’t beautiful, important and poignant, I don’t know what is.  

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#AllWomenAgeBeautifully

Photographs in this series can be shown in a variety of sizes: approximately 2.5 x 2” to 5 x 8’. The smaller images are intimate and the larger are confrontational. They are printed as archival inkjet prints, small photogravure prints, prints on plaster or jumbo vinyl prints.