40 years
14,610 days
350,640 hours
21,038,400 minutes
1,262,304,000 seconds
I was born to a woman of about forty. A few years later, she ended her days, her hours, her minutes, her seconds… I wanted this work associating nature in the wild with women around forty, as a tribute to my mother.
Forty is a symbolic age, an important time in a woman’s life. This age is also symbolically the middle of life expectancy. In the Middle Ages, it meant the expected term of life, as it still does today in some countries.
I wanted to question the connections between femininity and nature. The figure of the earth-mother or the mother-goddess appears in many cultures where she is always linked to nature, as a symbol of fertility, fruitfulness and of life…
I asked each of the women I photographed to make an addition to the photo with a text on their ideas of being forty, of time passing quickly, a youth forever lost, of the slowly changing body… I always liked the idea of connecting text and image, which would be above, around, beside. This time the writing and the shape is not mine. It is like a misappropriation, a deliberate renunciation as a proof of love.
Jean-Michel Leligny
Jean-Michel Leligny, Femmes de 40 ans
Hotel Saint Simon
15 rue de la Cloche Verte
16000 Angoulême
France
http://www.galerie-photo.com/leligny-jean-michel.html
