Photographer Kelly Sinclair explores what it is to be a woman in her 50s.
I was born in Manhattan, NY and grew up in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. My mother was a black and white film photographer and she bought me my first camera, a Nikon FM, and exposed me to photographers such as Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Irving Penn. I was endlessly fascinated by the faces of humanity. Black and white portrait photography carried me through high school and a further study of photography in college. As life filled with marriage, children and work, I took my camera with me on my daily morning walks and shifted my gaze to the natural world – the beauty of my surroundings in the Catskill Mountains.
When I turned 50, I felt the pull to revisit portrait photography, to integrate my reverence of nature and the human form. The transition of entering my fifties felt momentous. I wanted to explore what it means as women to experience this transformational time of life.