A series investigating the effects of gravity on the female form.
In the new book Aging Gracefully, photographer Karsten Thormaehlen shot 52 portraits of men and women over 100 years old. The project took him to four continents, from Munich to New York to Tokyo. “It’s not a book on death or almost-death,” he told the Cut. “It’s a book on the power and beauty of life.”
Each photo is accompanied by a short caption describing the centenarian, but Thormaehlen emphasized he wants viewers to focus on his subjects’ features. “Look more into the face and interpret it through the lines of the face, the eyes,” he said.
The ten women shown here live all over the world, including New York, France, Peru, and Ecuador. (Fun fact: Women consistently outrank men on lists of “oldest people in the world” — of the 44 oldest people in the world right now, 43 of them are women.) Click ahead to preview the book, out March 7 from Chronicle Books.
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Kiyo Aragai
Born September 10, 1914, in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan.
María Teresa Bolivar vda de Lercari
Born July 4, 1913, in Lima, Peru.
Betty Markoff
Born August 26, 1916, in Toronto, Canada.
Olivia Hooker
Born February 12, 1915, in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Paula Klambauer
Born April 19, 1912, in Wels, Austria.
Maria Luisa Medina
Born April 8, 1913, in Loja, Ecuador.
Evelyn Zehring
Born September 21, 1914, in Fairfield, Montana.
Miyagui Kami
Born August 25, 1916, in Ōgimi, Japan.
Kimiyo Sato
Born October 28, 1912, in Nagasaki, Japan.
Gisele Casadesus
Born June 14, 1914, in Paris, France.