This is a project by Mark Story. A great collection of black and white photos of centenarians (people 100 years and older) and supercentenarians (people > 110 years). The idea to photograph people who have lived in three centuries evolved over the course of the project. First, he was simply interested in taking portraits of people who appear worn beyond their years by living extraordinarily hard lives. Those experiences drew him to centenarians, and on to supercentenarians and their stories.
People consistently ask the same questions when viewing the portraits: How does a person live to be 114 years old? What do these long-lived people have in common that makes many of them look younger than people in their 90s, 80s and even 70s? The notes on aging is a short review of the current research on longevity. The experience of talking with a 110 year-old man whose father stood next to Abraham Lincoln during the Gettysburg Address does not easily lend itself to words.
102 year-old Chinese woman; She lived her entire life in the same mud house, which stood behind the Beijing Hotel. She spoke about living through the rule of China’s last Emperor, the Boxer Rebellion, two World Wars and the Communist Party’s rise to power. She was afraid her home was going to be torn down because the hotel was expanding.
103 year-old Portuguese widow, dressed entirely in black wool to mourn the loss of her husband. He died in his early twenties — as do many fishermen in Portugal. Many Portuguese women hold strongly to their Catholic faith, living as widows for the rest of their lives.
106 year-old Coeur d’Alene Native American woman, the oldest living tribe member. She helped her father farm and run steamboats. She married twice,first a traditional marriage that didn’t last long.Her second marriage lasted fifty years.
110 year 320 day-old American man of Native American, African American and Swedish descent — the 44th oldest living person in the world. His father stood on the platform next to President Abraham Lincoln as Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. His father was the illegitimate son of Lincoln’s Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, who became President after Lincoln’s assassination. He is quickwitted, opinionated, blind, talkative and one of the last living veterans of World War I. „Why have you lived this long?” I asked. He said, „I don’t fool around with women, beer, wine or whiskey.”
105 year-old Italian man born in Sicily. 101 years ago, his family came to America on a boat; he remembers his mother negotiating for food for his family and waving at the Statue of Liberty. At 18, while working at a cement factory in Texas, the Black Hand (Mafia) threatened to „take” family members. To escape the pressures of extortion, his family moved to southern California. In the 1920s, he rode trains with hobos. While working in Yellowstone Park, he got to shake President Hoover’s hand. He opened a flower business when he was 40 and retired from it three times, finally retiring at the age of 89. On his 105th birthday, he had a couple of glasses of red wine and danced with the girls, his doctor and „the blonde nurse.”
108 year-old American man of English descent. He grew up on a Montana ranch that he later inherited from his father, who lived to 101. He had 1,500 head of cattle and rode Kentucky-bred horses.
110 year 115 day-old man of German and Irish descent. Several of his grandparents lived past 100. He served in the Army in World Wars I and II and then worked as a railroad brakeman. During the Depression he traveled much of the country riding the rails with hobos. At 102, he was walking ten miles a day. Now he walks three miles a day and can still read the bottom three lines on an eye chart. He gave up drinking in his 60s, but smoked into his 80s. He continues to work a few hours a week at a tanning salon/espresso cafe. He said, „I still chase good-looking women around. I just can’t catch up with them, my legs don’t work fast enough.”