TIME OUT:Exhibition gives an inspirational vision of ageing
PHOTOGRAPHS ARE powerful. Works of art, they convey much, especially those that are designed to be representative of a group, a society, an idea, an age, stage or a condition.
There is choice of subject, composition, perspective, detail, angle, lighting and all the factors that portray the psychological mood and meaning of what is being displayed.
The Prime Yearsexhibition at the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar, part of this year's Bealtaine festival, which is the national festival celebrating creativity in older age, is an example of that.
It is a depiction of many aspects of ageing through the eyes of 12 artists from around the world. Their perspectives present the multidimensional subject of age to us. With their photographs they trigger all of our own deep, atavistic, unconscious beliefs about age, the ageing process itself and our own place in it.
If the photographs are not of us as we now perceive ourselves to be, they represent how we may be and open up realities for our consideration.
For example, the image of a white-haired man sitting in an armchair has multiple interpretations. One is the ease, the tranquillity, the benign half smile, restful pose, the capacity to sit still, to rest after a life-time of work.
Another interpretation is helplessness, confined to a chair, rendered still by time. But has he a wise smile as he looks out at us who still strut and fret through life? Has he secret knowledge of the futility of it all and a lifetime of experiences available only to those who have reached a certain age? Is it a positive or negative image of age or is it merely a photograph of a man in a chair onto which we project whatever is relevant to us when we view it?
Consider another photograph. What can one make of the trio of women, one with face resting upon her hand, one side of her glasses occluded, the younger woman looking at the child she is supporting who sits looking out towards us. Are they grandmother, daughter and grandchild or is that an assumption we make when we see a trio of women together separated by age? None is smiling. What are they thinking: what lies behind their stark and simple presence together without interaction with each other? It is the mood of this photograph that captivates.
The work in Prime Yearsis intended to provide an inspirational vision of ageing. It depicts centenarians, artists, relatives and other individuals "enjoying, enduring and living their lives". It is refreshingly real – it embraces age rather than obscures it. It is prepared to look at age rather than defer it, deny it, hide it or draw grotesque cosmetic veils over what is the essential truth and beauty of the ageing process, hidden by a fetish focus on homogenised images of youth.
In the book How Rembrandt Reveals Your Beautiful, Imperfect Selfby Roger Housden, "ways of seeing" is raised by the author. Housden discusses Rembrandt's painting, The Prophetess Anna, which is a portrait of his mother with her skin wrinkled by time, "eyes heavy with years" and hands that are "mottled and gnarled". He asks the question: do we know how to look, to contemplate, behold, reflect upon and engage with what we see?
But there is a bigger question which is not just do we know what we see, but do we know who decides what we see, and what images infiltrate our perceptions of ourselves and of our world? Who chooses those images? Because it is when we get to see age, as in this Prime Yearsexhibition, that we realise how often we are denied positive images of age itself.
Imagologists, or media philosophers, recognise the extent to which media images shape our world. What makes the exhibition special from a psychological point of view, is how it invites us into the complexity of the ageing process itself.
For age is not a stage but a process and one in which all of us are engaged all of our lives.
For further information on the Prime Yearsexhibition see galleryofphotography.ie. Bealtaine festival information is available at bealtaine.com