Beauty has no expiration date!

The I AM project showcases portraits and interviews of 121 women between the ages of forty and ninety-nine, celebrating diversity in all areas — age, form, ethnicity and so on. Vanity Fair Italia recently interviewed me to discuss the project. Below is the interview, you can see the full feature at VanityFair.It

Angelika Buettner is a photographer famous for her many works in the world of fashion, beauty and advertising. Her most particular undertaking, however, is the I AM project, a series of 121 interviews and portraits of women between forty and ninety-nine years of age, from which a splendid photographic book and online movement have been created. The subjects were chosen precisely because mature women are often excluded from the media. Buettner instead asked them to show themselves as openly as possible: naked, but above all exposing what each of them perceived as a defect. The revelations, both in the images and in the brief writings that accompany them, reveal unpredictable inner worlds, and above all an immense beauty that seems unfair to have been hidden until now. Since much of the project stages a great sensuality and a joyous eroticism decidedly similar to the issue of Vanity Fair dedicated to the theme of desire, we contacted the artist to know her point of view on the operation.

How was the I AM project born, and how did it change your perceptions of the female figure and social difficulties?

The desire to honor and shoot the female body has accompanied me since I was twenty years old both as a professional fashion and beauty photographer and in personal non-commercial art projects. As time went by, I increasingly felt the need to represent mature women who were largely invisible, with a society obsessed with the cult of youth. I wanted to take a genuine look at the woman of the 21st century, taking off all her masks and costumes to show a powerful, liberated woman, able to appreciate herself, a woman who wears nothing but what she feels inside, so nudity seemed to me the only possible way.

I wanted to eliminate the fear of advancing age, bringing aging back to being a normal process, accepted and integrated into society. The book and a series of interviews on YouTube have created the basis for a digital platform with which to expand the collective consciousness towards more self-love, more self-esteem, authenticity, pure truth, confidence and freedom.

When I read on the I AM Movement website about the camera as a therapeutic tool for models, I was reminded of the sin al-yaas paradigm. The Arabic word for ‘menopause’ literally translates as ‘age of anguish’, a heavy sentence on older women. Although less explicitly, this social stigma is found in almost all cultures. Can you better explain how your photographs have contributed to lifting this burden, and what other methods would you suggest you use?

I see beauty in everyone and want to make it visible. I work very intuitively, leaving a lot of room for women. I take a step back to make the person shine and let them feel comfortable in front of the lens. The I AM project has succeeded in making women feel capable of loving themselves for who they are rather than how they are seen by others.

The more I immersed myself in the project, the more I was able to experience firsthand how deeply doubts, judgments and misunderstandings about standards of beauty make women suffer, causing insecurities and shame on their appearance. And it is not just about age.

There is a need for a paradigm shift, and fortunately I am very happy to say that there is a new movement — especially on social media — in favor of every age, body shape, gender, gray hair and so on. It fills me with joy to see more and more women exposing themselves to present a new cultural and institutional concept of ageing. Times are changing thanks to their words and the way they are, even with new publications dedicated to the subject! I wish there were more: it is important not to idealize those few women who never seem to age, and the media play an important role in this.

On the other hand, the transformation begins deep within each one of us in how we educate our children, because certain problems go through the generations since the first teenage turmoil on their body and appearance.

Many photos in his book show a clean but markedly erotic look. What did you find out about seduction in the 121 shots to make it happen?

Without wanting to be voyeuristic, I AM is more about sensuality than seduction, and that's the big difference from most nude photobooks. For me, these are nude portraits of the soul as well, shown without covers, and this influences the result. Some women felt more erotic, and because I did not want to impose my vision I allowed them to look as they preferred. In the one-on-one relationship without even an assistant around, there have been explosions of chemistry never experienced before. This is also part of what makes the book different and beautiful: each photo is a surprise, completed by a little writing in which the model shares her intuitions and her concept of beauty. I aspired to introversion, to create a safe space in which to express emotions and transport readers. Each page is a discovery of a unique personality, in which women between 40 and 99 years old are not identified with age as is usually done in the industry. What I brought home is that age does not define us, and it does not change us unless we let it.

And this inevitably leads to the same question about sex in the "mature" area. Which, by the way, according to the criteria of mainstream porn should curiously include the age group between 27 and 40... For a long time now women over 40 have been interpreted by younger people. So the stories and images become false, and hide the truth and beauty of maturity. My book is a project about femininity and humanity, not only for women but for everyone. It is about self-love and how we missed it on the street chasing the chimera of what others want to see.

The more one feels centered within oneself, the more one is influenced by the exterior and the relationship with sex, in all its diversity and personal choices that, on balance, have nothing to do with age. Souls do not grow old.

The work focuses not only on age but also on the perception of imperfections in general. What did you find to be the most frequent, and how would you suggest to act to make real diversity more accepted?

True life itself is diversity in all areas, such as age, form, ethnicity and so on. We see above all a selective, filtered and false view of what women are supposed to be like. This creates profound problems in women of all ages, because they are constantly being pushed to perfect themselves, to judge their appearance and in essence to be unhappy. It's time to change this in the media and how we raise our children! Here we must redefine the so-called myth of beauty, which I believe is found in every creature. That's why the subtitle I chose for the book is Celebrating the Perfect Imperfect: putting naked bodies in front of everyone's eyes overcomes the fear of being judged, just as my subjects overcame theirs and came out of the comfort zone full of courage. I admire them very much because theirs is an incredible gift, which I hope I can give to every woman. Wouldn't it be nice if each of us could have a beautiful nude portrait showing what touches her soul, as well as her skin?

We should stop confronting each other and celebrate our uniqueness, live in an extraordinary way the challenges and adventures that life has to offer us, enjoying it to the fullest. Beauty has no expiration date!