"Pentimento": Classic beauties at the age of

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week we are publishing a new photo editor for New York magazine Tirza Brott, dedicated to the study of maturity, as well as external and internal beauty.

Pen · ti · men · to | ˌpentəˈmentō | (n); from Italian "repentance" is a term meaning in painting the gradual bleeding of the original layers of the image in the painting that "come out" to the surface over time.

I do not know the exact age of any of the heroines of the project. I never asked. For me, it was not so much the exact figure that was important, but the era in which they grew, and what they had time to see, things that I will never know or experience because of my age. If you take a chance and try to guess, then I would suggest that the youth of most women, who are pulling me away from photography, fell on the 50s, maybe the early 60s. There is something special for me not to pronounce everything to the end. They don't ask me questions, I don't ask them. They have their own fantasies and secrets - perhaps partly reflected in the way they dress - but I prefer not to separate them from my reality.

Looking back at this project after the fact, I clearly understand the connection between my interest in mature women as an object of study and my childhood obsession with Billy Wilder's movie "Sunset Boulevard", which takes place in Hollywood in the 50s. More precisely, even his heroine Norm Desmond - the former silent film star who has not lost the glamorous article over the years. She dresses as if it is only the world that is changing around her, and she is holding on to something more eternal. In the women I photograph, I see the same determination to hold on to the roots - loyalty to classical elegance, beauty, style that has not been around for a long time. I'm not sure how much my heroines are aware of how stunning they are, how much they stand out in a crowd of young girls dressed in American Apparel - all as one, just in things of different colors. These women are rare birds. And we must have time to notice them before it is too late.

Everything in them is real. It's like a time machine, just not divorced from the present. This is their style, which we, young people, are trying to recreate, something that we need to really try not to forget. After all, genuine, classic beauties, like these women, are not forever. And then we will have nothing left but to be inspired by their copies, and then copies of copies - and so on to infinity.

I think in most cases these women grew up in an era when “dressing up” meant not exactly the same thing as now. Just as they dress, people dress in everyday life. This is a part of their personality, in which environment they grew up. It is an ingrained habit: "Show yourself to the world from your best side - and you will begin to experience the feeling of self-confidence that you demonstrate." Of course, I can only project on them my own idea of their values. But it seems to me that the "everyday chic" that we are now seeing in New York is a relatively young phenomenon.

As a twenty-something-year-old woman, it is difficult for me to say that this particular project speaks about growing up. But I have formed a certain idea of what it is like to be a gorgeous woman of a certain age. And I hope that when I live up to these years, I will also be of interest to young women. I hope they will look at me with admiration, and not just stare out of curiosity. That’s the way I think it’s worth treating people who are older than us. Reverse attitude is just fear, but with fear, as you know, there is no life.