Reclaiming women’s bodies from shame’: a photographic illumination of ageing

Reclaiming women’s bodies from shame’: a photographic illumination of ageing

When Australian photographer Ponch Hawkes went looking for artistic images of naked older

 women, the search results were depressing. She was only a few clicks away from “granny porn”; the only other results were “Helen Mirren – and some pics of older women in their underwear.”

Older women just aren’t portrayed in the art world, says Hawkes, 75. You may spot a few in fashion magazines, but “if you see older women in Vogue they are totally gorgeous – and they were probably totally gorgeous when they were younger too … You just don’t see women that have normal bodies.

As a result, she says, “we don’t know what the bodies of older women actually look like”. These are bodies that have been lived in: “Some women have had mastectomies, some have had pregnancies, some have stretch marks, others have scars,” she says.

“I suspect that our image of what we ought to look like is stuck at our 28-year-old selves, which can be really self-defeating. We don’t know what other women look like either; we have nothing to illuminate the normal course of ageing.”