Aging Gracefully: Portraits of People Over 100

by Karsten Thormaehlen (Photographer)

Overview

Fall in love with 52 wise, healthy, and joyful 100-year-olds in this celebratory and uplifting art book. A beautiful and fascinating exploration of what it is like to be over 100 years old, Aging Gracefully invites readers to look into the face of a century of life experience with portraits of centenarians captured by the compassionate, minimalist lens of photographer Karsten Thormaehlen. The striking photographs are accompanied by short bios of the centenarians, featuring quotes and wisdom on love, food, humor, and living with grace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452145334
Publisher:	Chronicle Books LLC
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Pages:	120
Sales rank:	1,247,312
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Karsten Thormaehlen is an award-winning German photographer, editor, and graphic designer. His work documenting life at an advanced age has been shown in more than 50 exhibitions around the world. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany.

Editorial Reviews

01/16/2017
Thormaehlen, a German photographer, follows 2011’s Happy at Hundred with the latest output of his decades-long interest in photographing elderly people around the world. This collection features 52 simple naturalistic, color headshots of joyful, wrinkled centagenarians from all over the world, including Iceland, Japan, Peru, and the United States. Each portrait is presented side by side with a short, stylized biography drawn from conversations between Thormaehlen and his subjects during photographing sessions. Some of these mini biographies summarize notable life events in a few sentences (Olivia Hooker, an American, notes a scarring encounter with the KKK during the 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Okla.), and serve as miniature chronicles of social development over the 20th century. Others focus on the subject’s daily life, with tales of hobbies and visits from grandchildren. Life advice seeps into the paragraph on Johanna Spiekermann, whose husband died when she was 24, as she explains that her recipe for a long life is “a certain defiance” of tragedy. With sharp focus and studio lighting, the photos of these often smiling seniors depict appreciation of life through mischievous eyes and laugh lines, age spots and soft smiles, fragile skin and thoughtful looks. This is a gentle and uplifting celebration of the tail end of human experience. Color photos. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"The photos of these often smiling seniors depict appreciation of life through mischievous eyes and laugh lines, age spots and soft smiles, fragile skin and thoughtful looks.… A gentle and uplifting celebration." -Publishers Weekly

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