{"id":7129,"date":"2022-11-22T07:26:05","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T12:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=7129"},"modified":"2022-11-22T07:27:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T12:27:13","slug":"a-photographers-rich-portrait-of-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2022\/11\/a-photographers-rich-portrait-of-aging\/","title":{"rendered":"A Photographer\u2019s Rich Portrait of Aging"},"content":{"rendered":"

What happens when a 70-something professional photographer sets out to record her own body as she ages and the bodies of other, older people, sometimes naked and sometimes not? In this article, Journalist Judith Graham interviews the photographer, Marna Clarke, for <\/span><\/i>Kaiser Health News<\/span><\/a> (KHN) <\/span>and describes reactions\u2014in the art world and beyond\u2014to Clarke\u2019s moving <\/span><\/i>portraits of aging<\/span><\/i><\/a>. Graham\u2019s article was posted on the <\/span><\/i>KHN<\/span> website on October 7, 2022. It also ran in the <\/span><\/i>San Francisco Chronicle<\/span><\/a>. <\/span>Funding from the Silver Century Foundation helps KHN develop articles (like this one) on longevity and related health and social issues. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

A dozen years ago, at age 70, Marna Clarke had a dream. She was walking on a sidewalk and rounded a corner. Ahead of her, she saw an end to the path and nothing beyond.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a turning point for Clarke. \u201cI realized, \u2018Oh my God, I\u2019m nearer the end than the beginning,\u2019\u201d she said. Soon, she was seized by a desire to examine what she looked like at that time\u2014and to document the results.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clarke, a professional photographer decades before, picked up a camera and began capturing images of her face, hair, eyes, arms, legs, feet, hands, and torso. In many, she was undressed. \u201cI was exploring the physical part of being older,\u201d she told me.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a radical act: older women are largely invisible in our culture, and honest and unsentimental portraits of their bodies are almost never seen.<\/span><\/p>\n

I found out there\u2019s a taboo about showing older adults\u2019 bodies\u2014some people were just aghast.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014Marna Clarke<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before long, Clarke, who lives in Inverness, CA, turned her lens on her partner, Igor Sazevich, a painter and architect 11 years her senior, and began recording scenes of their life together. Eventually, she realized they were growing visibly older in these photographs. And she understood she was creating a multiyear portrait of aging.<\/span><\/p>\n

The collection that resulted, which she titled \u201cTime As We Know It,\u201d this year won a LensCulture Critics\u2019 Choice Award, given to 40 photographers on five continents. \u201cThere is a universality and humility in seeing these images which remind us of the power of love and the fragility of life,\u201d wrote Rhea Combs of the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s National Portrait Gallery, one of the judges.<\/span><\/p>\n

Early on, some people were offended by the images Clarke displayed at galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area, near her home. \u201cI found out there\u2019s a taboo about showing older adults\u2019 bodies\u2014some people were just aghast,\u201d she told me in a phone conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

But many people in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s expressed gratitude. \u201cI learned that older people are dying for some kind of recognition and acceptance and that they want to feel seen\u2014to feel that they\u2019re not invisible,\u201d Clarke said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Art has many benefits in later life, both for creators and for those who enjoy their work. It can improve health by expanding well-being, cultivating a sense of purpose and countering beliefs such as the assumption that older age is defined almost exclusively by deterioration and decline, <\/span>Gene Cohen, MD<\/a>,<\/span> wrote in <\/span>The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life<\/span><\/i>, published in 2000.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perspective and acceptance of her own body have been benefits of her project. <\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cohen, a psychiatrist, was the first director of the Center for Aging, Health and Humanities at George Washington University and acting director of the National Institute on Aging from 1991 to 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2006, Cohen published findings from the <\/span>Creativity and Aging Study<\/a>,<\/span> conducted in San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, and the Washington, DC, area. Two groups of older adults were studied: those who participated weekly in arts programs led by professionals, and people who went about their usual business. Those in the first group saw doctors less often, used less medication, were more active and had better physical and mental health overall, the study found.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Clarke, \u201cperspective\u201d and \u201cacceptance of my body as it is\u201d have been benefits of her 12-year project. As a young and middle-aged woman, she said, she was \u201cobsessed\u201d with and anxious about her appearance. \u201cNow, I think there\u2019s a beauty that comes out of people when they accept who they are,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s altered how I look at myself and how I see others.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after our first conversation, in early August, Clarke, now 82, found herself at another turning point with the <\/span>death of<\/span> <\/a>Sazevich,<\/span> 93, who had lymphoma and refused chemotherapy. The couple had been together since 2003 but hadn\u2019t married.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sazevich had fallen three times in the months before, broken his hip, contracted pneumonia in the hospital and returned home on hospice. As he lay in bed on his final day, receiving morphine and surrounded by family, two dogs belonging to one of his daughters came close, checking on him every hour. At the moment of his death, they growled, probably because \u201cthey felt a change in the energy,\u201d Clarke said.<\/span><\/p>\n

It takes a community to comfort an older adult who is coping with loss. <\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt was amazing\u2014I have never been through an experience like that in my life,\u201d she said about Sazevich\u2019s death. \u201cThere was so much love in that room, you could cut it with a knife. I think it\u2019s changed me. It\u2019s given me a glimpse of what\u2019s possible with humans.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Everywhere she goes in Inverness, Clarke runs into people who tell her how sorry they are for her loss and ask if they can help. \u201cI am overwhelmed by the care pouring over me from my friends and family,\u201d she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s like a huge embrace.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It takes a community to comfort an older adult coping with loss, just as it takes a community to raise a child. Clarke said she is still \u201cup and down emotionally \u2026 questioning what death is\u201d as she processes her loss.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, Clarke said, she wants to restart work on \u201cTime As We Know It.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause it\u2019s about aging me,\u201d she said. \u201cMy aging. And that\u2019s what I\u2019m committed to. It\u2019s given me a purpose. And when you\u2019re growing old, you need to have something you love and makes you feel alive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happens when a 70-something professional photographer sets out to record her own body as she ages and the bodies of other, older people, sometimes naked and sometimes not? In this article, Journalist Judith Graham interviews the photographer, Marna Clarke,…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more A Photographer\u2019s Rich Portrait of Aging<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":7130,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,49,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ageism","category-featured","category-getting-older","category-issues-in-aging"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"Her 12-year quest to document her own life\u00a0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7129"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7132,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7129\/revisions\/7132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}