‘Something happens to flesh after fifty.’ This was said with some sadness by the famous screen siren Joan Crawford when she was in her early 50s, posing for publicity shots for her film Autumn Leaves, about a spinster wooed by a man many years her junior. The fact Crawford also insisted that photojournalist Eve Arnold record her in the nude suggests something of the actress’s sass and defiance; her refusal to become invisible.
Resisting invisibility is also at the heart of the Flesh After Fifty program of art exhibitions, public events, author talks and film screenings that are all aimed at changing images of older women in art.