A visual exploration of the different ages of woman featured in Vogue Paris November 2008. The blog Picdit shared this interesting endeavour and it has become immensely popular on wordpress. All done with 20 year old model make up, costume and lighting only, with Eniko Mihalik by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, stylist Carine Roitfeld, and make-up artist Lisa Butler. I’ve included the images below and have also added the generation to which each age represented in the image belongs. This highlights how powerfully our understanding of age or generation is influenced by the signs and symbols that we read visually. This essay uses these poses, clothing, make up and the model to effectively manipulate our perceptions.
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boomer
sixty years old
boomer
- fifty years old
generation x
- forty years old
generation x
- thirty years old
- twenty years old
generation z
- ten years old
via A 20-year-old model photographed as if she were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 years old « Picdit
It is great that Vogue has explored ageing through the use of hair, make up, styling and photographic techniques alone. It makes a change from the obsession with only showing young thin models which makes increasing numbers turn to consider plastic surgery. The UK cosmetic surgery market has expanded rapidly over the past 5 years (2003 to 2007). It is estimated that the market — which includes both surgical and non-surgical procedures — was worth £493m at the end of 2007, with annual growth rates of between 21.7% and 69% from 2003. In contrast in the US there is now evidence of a downward trend. Hopefully this may make growing old seem more acceptable and other media will start to use images of older people.