Every year in October, Blue Week focuses on a population that tends to forget the rest of the year: the elderly, especially those living alone. It is an opportunity to talk about a subject that is particularly close to my heart in the context of High Sensitivity Portrait: what isolation does to the image you have of yourself when you age, and what a simple portrait can change.
What is Blue Week
Blue Week, or National Seniors and Seniors Week, is a highlight of many associations, communities and institutions each year to remind seniors of their place in society and to combat their exclusion. Workshops, shows, intergenerational meetings: the initiatives are numerous, but they all share the same objective, restoring visibility to people as age, loss of autonomy or widowhood have sometimes made invisible.
Isolation of the elderly, a reality that worsens with age
Isolation does not affect all older people in the same way, but there are often factors: the departure of children, the loss of the spouse, the end of working life which cuts off a whole social network, the loss of mobility which makes exits more difficult. Associations like Les Petits Frères des Pauvres, with whom I work on this subject, see this on the ground daily: many elderly people can spend several days in a row without exchanging a word with anyone.
This isolation has consequences that go beyond the simple feeling of loneliness: it also undermines the relationship to oneself. When nobody looks at us anymore, you end up looking less at yourself.
Why we stop getting photographed when we get older
It's a rather striking phenomenon: most people have hundreds of photos between the ages of 20 and 40, and less and less spent a certain age. Several reasons for that. First, there are fewer opportunities — fewer parties, fewer trips, fewer smartphones around to immortalize a moment. Second, there is a form of modesty, or even shame, in the face of a changing body and face, in a society that especially values youth.
The result is that many isolated elderly people simply have more recent image of themselves. Their loved ones either, by the way — which makes mourning, when it occurs, even more painful: sometimes there is only a picture of 15 or 20 years back to remember someone.
Portrait as a gesture of gratitude
This is precisely where a portrait session can have an impact that far exceeds the photo itself. Take the time to photograph an elderly person, with care and without seeking to «correct» the traces of time, it is to send him a very simple message: your face deserves to be watched, today, as it is.
In the feedback I may have had during the first sessions in this framework, which comes back most often, it is not a comment on the technical quality of the photo, but on the moment itself: the fact of having been listened to, watched, taken seriously for a few tens of minutes. For someone who lives alone, it's not a detail.
How it happens in practice, in residence or at home
Sessions with associations with older people think differently of a classic session. The rhythm is slower, the place is familiar — living room, residence, common space — and there is never an obligation to «pose well». The objective is not to produce a perfect image in the commercial sense of the term, but a true image, which can be shared with the family, displayed at home, or simply kept as tangible proof that one exists, today, for someone.
Associate with High Sensitivity Portrait
If you work in an association, an autonomous residence, an EHPAD or a service that accompanies isolated elderly people, and this approach could make sense to the people you accompany, don't hesitate to contact me via portraithighsensitivity.fr. The sessions offered to the associations are entirely free for the beneficiaries; The business model is based on paid sessions with individuals and businesses, as well as donations.
Blue Week lasts seven days. The isolation of older people lasts all year. But every initiative that reminds us that one can still look at them, well beyond that week.
