ARTIST STATEMENT

VIVA WOMAN

The people who appear in my work are all working women over the age of 60.
The reason I decided to make this piece came from a feeling of regret I had when my own mother retired from her part-time job last year and I realized I had never taken a picture of her at work. Up until then I'd been spending a lot of time thinking of concepts for artworks, but then I noticed that there were a lot of women just like my mother around me, over sixty and working hard at their jobs. That's when I started recording them on film.
The women I met were bursting with vitality, and they destroyed my preconception that the age of 60 = retirement age = no longer working. Most of the women had been working for several decades. When I asked them why, they told me, “I've got to make a living.”
Still, these women enjoy their work. That was made very clear to me.
Mothers, professionals, and more than anything, women. I focused the camera intently on the faces, where their life stories were etched.

Entries form: Print, 457 x 560mm, 30 pieces, color photographic printing paper Book, A4, 30 pages