IF YOU ARE LUCKY, YOU GET OLD
Having already introduced in the past the series Elvis and My Family, we asked the German photographer Freya Najade to tell us a little bit of the project If You’re Lucky You Get Old. Through a series of portraits and words, we discover the stories of elderly people, and their humanity, their dreams, desires, pleasures and regrets. We tend to get closer to a world that often seems distant and alien. A world to which we all belong sooner or later. A search that struck us and that we have the pleasure to share with you all.
«‘If you are lucky, you get old’. This was one of the first things the elderly taught me when I set off to find out more about them. In my surroundings and every day life old people hardly seemed to exist. I couldn’t feel their presence although I knew that they were somewhere there. Thinking of them or of myself becoming old made me worried and pitiful. Wrinkles, disease and decay came to mind. What actually happened to the times when the old were the wise and taught the young about life? Having so little knowledge about the elders, I went out to look for them in retirement communities in Portland, Oregon and in Palm Springs, California. In the project ‘If you are lucky, you get old’, I tell stories of the elderly I met and spent time with. To my surprise, the old were not just proud of their age and the fact that they made it that far in life, they were also still falling in love and breaking up. They were overcoming their lifetime partner’s death, living out their erotic fantasies or dealing with the loss of their sexual desire. Talking to them showed that inner growth is ever lasting, and that humans even above the age of seventy continue to love, suffer, long, dream and have sexual feelings.»
© All copyright remains with photographer Freya Nayade