Then there is old old, a realm often belonging to the parents of the baby boomers. This is nursing-home old. This is prunes-for-breakfast old. This is “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” old.
Yet a few months ago, arriving on my desk like so many pounds of zeitgeist, an unlikely third way appeared in the form of a coffee-table book called “Advanced Style.” The book features old people, often very old people, mainly women, photographed on the street, dressed up lively for the winters of their lives. They are buttressed by pullquotes like: “When you are younger, you dress for other people. When you are older, you dress for yourself.” One photo is of a 100-year-old woman holding a seasoned ostrich purse in one hand and a walking stick in the other; her facial expression suggests a certain curiosity as to why in God’s name this boychik with a digital camera wants so much to take her picture.
“Advanced Style” was created by a 31-year-old street-style photographer from San Diego named Ari Seth Cohen. He started the project as a photo blog, and both the “Advanced Style” book and blog share the standout quality of being so of their time that they feel nearly peculiar — at once familiar and like nothing you’ve ever seen.
“Advanced Style” has sold out four printings since it was first published last spring. Its popularity has made Cohen — by all photographic evidence something of a nebbish, a guy who says that if he hadn’t made it in the style world, he would have gone to work at a nursing home — one of New York City’s more unlikely tastemakers. (...)
It would be easy to make the mistake of thinking new interest in the aged exists simply because the boomers, still the largest generation in the Western Hemisphere, are now careering into seniorhood. But it’s worth remembering that, notwithstanding their aging, the boomers are still the generation that gave us the famous boardroom credo “Nobody wants to see old people on TV/in the movies/in advertisements.” In the 1980s, the peak years of boomer creative influence, if you were on television with more than six decades to your name, you were most likely flying into a snowy moonscape pulled by reindeer. “The Golden Girls” was what it meant to be acceptably ancient on prime time. Rue McClanahan was a fit 51 when she took the role of Blanche Devereaux on that show.
So it’s not the new old who are driving this fascination. It’s the young. Scratch the surface of youth culture, and a kind of Eldertopia is revealed, a pro-aged paradise lovingly promoted by people who are themselves not even close to middle-aged.
by Mireille Silcoff, NY Times | Read more:
Photo: Beatrix Ost via:
