The Over 40s Photography Campaign, Celebrating Age & Resilience for over 40s
The over 40s campaign celebrated age as a gift and opportunity
The over 40s campaign was the fruit of a lot of work over a period of two years, shooting, interviewing, putting together the magazine and organising the final private event to celebrate age, resilience and coming together at the end of the campaign.
It started as a mission to photograph a group of women and men over 40.
The campaign started when I decided I was going to set on a mission, to photograph a group of women and men over the age of 40.
A photoshoot experience
I invited people to take part in the campaign and experience a photoshoot as a way to celebrate their age and their lives.
It became more than a photoshoot as I incorporated stories
Sharing Stories & Life Lessons
As part of the campaign I invited people that did the photoshoots to also share their stories and life lessons.
Initially their reactions were to say that “we don’t have stories worth sharing”. But as I sent them the questions and teased out answers during the photoshoot and on calls afterwards, stories started to form.
Every person has a unique journey, coming from a different country, with family bonds, going through challenges, at work, on career change moments, when life events happen.
It was all very powerful to share and learn from every person’s life story.
A Glossy Contemporary Magazine
And a Collection of Stories
Having the stories from each person gave me a lot of material to include in each profile. Once I had completed the photoshoots of 20 people, I decided to start putting together the magazine. It was initially something with one page profile for each person, but since I had a lot of stories to share and images, it became more of a book with 95 pages in total. But with the glossy magazine look and the beautiful portraits.
I created the online version of the magazine and also printed copies that were something participants could order and have in their own books and coffee table collections, featuring their own images and stories.
The magazine celebrates every person that took part, with a personal profile, photographs and their background, how they felt during the photoshoot, how they want to evolve and what they want to acheive beyond their current state. Take a look and read the stories below.
Over 40s Magazine by Laura Shimili
A private Exhibition
At Modern Art Gallery in Marble Arch, London
I hosted the exhibition event at the contemporary art gallery in London, Casildart Gallery on Connaught Street, near Marble Arch. It was a gathering of campaign participants, family, friends and some of my clients. It was a great day to remember and to celebrate. Take a look at the reel from the night below.
The purpose of the campaign was to celebrate age & resilience
A new way emerged: confidence, sharing, love & acceptance
The whole campaign was a labour of love and what it brought was three-fold.
Doing the photoshoots in a way that was empowering and allowed people to feel comfortable and open up but also confident and empowered because of age and experience.
It was an incredible journey for me, from convincing people to take part, making it enticing and something for their profile and the business, but also inviting them to be part of the wider scope. Sharing their stories and life lessons in the magazine and at the exhibition event so that others can learn from them and not feel on their own.
What came out from all the stories, is that. wecan learn from others and feeling alone is not the way. There is a better way. The way of sharing, love and acceptance!
And I think we achieved that as a collective, in the magazine and during the final celebratory event but also in the empowering experience for each participant to doing something like this for themselves. An experience, portraits and a vision of something bigger.
The photographs and stories talk about resilience & strength
A slideshow of personal profiles
I created a slideshow projection to display on the night with every participant profile, photos and background. It played continously on the night allowing people. to stop, take a look and read through the features of every person. You can take a look below.
I am passionate about creating similar campaigns to highlight talent, age & diversity.
As I completed the campaign I felt an intense sense of connection to the people that took part in it but also to all the steps it took to make it a success.
Documenting people’s stories, challenges, passions, dreams and aspirations is something I felt very vocational about.
It is something that can be done for other purposes and missions and if it is something an organisation wants to put together I am very keen to help plan and deliver.
Get in touch if you’d like to discuss a campaign idea.