The Vitality Project
In response to both popular culture and recent political opportunism, I began the Vitality Project to celebrate the relevance, beauty and creative talent of women over 40 involved in the arts, through a series of photographs.
The brief for the project was very simple:
The X-Factor generation has become too used to being told that if you are over 25 then you are allotted little more than a token slot into the opportunities for life and relevance stakes. Moreover, investment in the arts has seemed to become something that is increasingly hard to justify, and the ambiguous benefits garnered by having a community consciousness that is flavoured by the arts, has not carried any trump card status politically, which has led to extensive cuts in arts-related budgets.
The women that I have had the honour and privilege to work with on this project, volunteered their involvement not because they particularly love having their photos taken, but because the underlying principal resonates with them - that they ARE vital; creative; intelligent; relevant to themselves as individuals, to their families, to their local community and to society as a whole.
For the female artists over 40, popular culture has left them feeling underrated and underrepresented, and political privations have cast doubts upon their creative powers - yet they are alive and well: relevant, beautiful and utterly vital!
The Vitality Project will feature at least 20 models, all females over 40 engaged in the arts.
The images are collaborative and respond to artistic inspirations ranging from Pre-Raphaelite masters to outdoor installation pieces created from recycled and natural materials.
One of the strongest principals of the project is that the models themselves are the experts about their own personalities, therefore all design decisions are collaborative and the range and diversity of responses to my original call for artists has both surprised and delighted me.
Of the shoots that I have completed so far, all of the models have been members of the Maidstone Visual Artists Network (MVAN), which "give[s] Maidstone visual artists the opportunity to network, find out what others are doing, talk about artistic practice, support each other and talk about ideas for future projects in Maidstone."
My hopes for the project are that it can receive a public audience and proudly project the talented participants in all their majesty.
"Chris really captures on camera qualities that we, as mature women, have developed over our lives, and qualities that we haven't necessarily seen ourselves in other photos. Great work Chris, it was a privilege to take part in something that honours mature women." [Pam Warner, artist and participating model]
In response to both popular culture and recent political opportunism, I began the Vitality Project to celebrate the relevance, beauty and creative talent of women over 40 involved in the arts, through a series of photographs.
The brief for the project was very simple:
- Be female
- Be over 40 years of age
- Be involved in the arts
- Be artistically inspired for the final image
The X-Factor generation has become too used to being told that if you are over 25 then you are allotted little more than a token slot into the opportunities for life and relevance stakes. Moreover, investment in the arts has seemed to become something that is increasingly hard to justify, and the ambiguous benefits garnered by having a community consciousness that is flavoured by the arts, has not carried any trump card status politically, which has led to extensive cuts in arts-related budgets.
The women that I have had the honour and privilege to work with on this project, volunteered their involvement not because they particularly love having their photos taken, but because the underlying principal resonates with them - that they ARE vital; creative; intelligent; relevant to themselves as individuals, to their families, to their local community and to society as a whole.
For the female artists over 40, popular culture has left them feeling underrated and underrepresented, and political privations have cast doubts upon their creative powers - yet they are alive and well: relevant, beautiful and utterly vital!
The Vitality Project will feature at least 20 models, all females over 40 engaged in the arts.
The images are collaborative and respond to artistic inspirations ranging from Pre-Raphaelite masters to outdoor installation pieces created from recycled and natural materials.
One of the strongest principals of the project is that the models themselves are the experts about their own personalities, therefore all design decisions are collaborative and the range and diversity of responses to my original call for artists has both surprised and delighted me.
Of the shoots that I have completed so far, all of the models have been members of the Maidstone Visual Artists Network (MVAN), which "give[s] Maidstone visual artists the opportunity to network, find out what others are doing, talk about artistic practice, support each other and talk about ideas for future projects in Maidstone."
My hopes for the project are that it can receive a public audience and proudly project the talented participants in all their majesty.
"Chris really captures on camera qualities that we, as mature women, have developed over our lives, and qualities that we haven't necessarily seen ourselves in other photos. Great work Chris, it was a privilege to take part in something that honours mature women." [Pam Warner, artist and participating model]
