Arianne Clément’s “100 Years, Age of Beauty” features larger than life, high contrast B&W images of women centenarians and the ephemera of their beauty regimens. As extreme in their emotional tone as they are in print contrast, the mood in Clément’s images range from the irrepressible Marie-Berthe Paquette hamming it up in party clothes to a doting daughter applying lipstick to her no longer verbal mother. Accompanying quotes regarding the subject’s attitudes on aging and beauty offer a further disparity with the prevailing societal obsession with youth. The contrasts in emotion are echoed in Clément’s rendering of deeply etched wrinkles in the women’s skin, a deliberate alignment of method with message: old age is full of extremes.
