Fine Art Photographer Rebecca L Webb is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this social documentary photography. From her project ‘Disobey the Convention‘. To see Rebecca’s projects click on any image.
A man doesn’t need to tamper with his face. A woman’s face is the canvas on which she paints a revised portrait of herself. — Susan Sontag
This series is a visual recording of the tension between the “iron determinant of age”* and the individual character of each subject, focusing on women almost 40 and older. Set in intimate environments, this work is a mirror I hold up to my own aging process. It is also a response to the veneration of youth in photography as an instantaneous marker of an appealing image. In this body of work, I create portraits that captures youth in the guise of senescence.
Sometimes the images I make of my subjects are at odds with how they see themselves, and those portraits most often do not end up getting posted on Facebook.
Set in a society where youth and beauty are paramount, through these pictures I examine the society that we belong to — our value structure of beauty and aging. This work is ultimately about the viewer, as much as it is about the subject.
* Photographer Anne Noggle: “The image I see is of youth betrayed by age, of spirit strong but fragile with time. I want to show who the people in my pictures are, and how damned difficult it is as each of us in our time becomes them.”
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By Rebecca L Webb
