Arianne Clément: The Art of Aging – Helsinki Photo Festival

The Art of Aging is a photo story on the themes of beauty and sensuality after 70.

A warm welcome to the exhibition opening on Tuesday 28 June from 17.00 to 19.00.

Helsinki Photo Festival presents the solo exhibition Art of Aging by Canadian photographer Arianne Clément in Stoa Gallery from June 28th-August 14th, 2022.

The project is part of the official Helsinki Pride program.

This project owes its existence to a revelation Canadian photographer Arianne Clément experienced when she encountered Marie-Berthe, a young 102-year-old beauty whose ease and casualness in front of the lens was as impressive as it was inspiring. Clément was immediately taken with the old woman and the way she totally - almost unconsciously - felt beautiful and attractive and was not afraid to show it off. What if beauty could not be reduced to an idealized aesthetic? What if, beyond the traces left by the passage of time on our features, beauty could be something less tangible but more lasting?

This vision is far removed from learned ideas and clichés commonly associated with beauty. It doesn’t have to be something that we are born with or without and neither does it have to be the privilege of youth. Beauty has to be much more and, hopefully, much better than this. It is a way of being. Something to cultivate, teach and learn from, and something that each of the nine women, and four men, that reveal themselves in this project are marvellous examples of. As models, they have been a great inspiration to Arianne and it is her hope that her portraits will transmit their spirit and maybe also a precious lesson on the venerable art of aging.

The elders whose intimacy is revealed and celebrated share with Clément a notion of beauty and sensuality that inspires a state of grace. Borrowing from the conventions of Nude and Boudoir photography, the pictures show her fascination with the human body and its great potential for emotional expression. It is therefore of great importance to Clément to establish a strong bond with her models, with the goal of laying them bare both physically and psychologically. The subjects, captured in their uniqueness, diversity and vulnerability, are sublimated by the use of black-and-white which enhances their presence and adds a poetic dimension to each portrait.