Aging is Beautiful — Inside the Current with Clélia Odette
Clélia Odette is a French photographer whose practice moves with a precision, unafraid to name what has been culturally silenced, particularly within the terrain of womanhood. Her portraits are studies in intimacy and unrest, a raw, unfiltered documentation.
Her forthcoming book, Belles Mômes, emerges from years of conversation and photographic encounter with women over fifty, offering a necessary reframing of age, sensuality and visibility. In these portraits, Clélia reveals what is often omitted from cultural narratives: the ongoingness of desire, the sharp fatigue of performance and the shared longing of having never fully felt at home in one’s body.
What animates Clélia’s work is the impulse to tell the truth — she cultivates a form of visual activism that resists spectacle and returns instead to nuance, sensation and emotional intelligence. Her voice — both behind the camera and within herself — is shaped by a passion for coherence in a world of increasing dissonance.
In this interview, we glimpse the current moving through her now — movement toward stillness, toward the organic, toward the kind of feminine expression that no longer asks permission to exist.
AURORA— There are seasons when something in us begins to move before we understand where it’s going. A pull, a shedding, a quiet storm beneath the surface. What current is moving through your life right now and how are you letting (or resisting) it reshape you?
Clélia— Right now, and I’d say for the past two years, I’ve been feeling a deep unease about the direction the world is taking. Being very sensitive, I often need to retreat from this vast void in order to reconnect with an inner strength. I often recharge by being alone, naked on a sunlit rock.
My artistic practice is increasingly becoming a caricature of what I perceive. I’m not trying to change anyone, but rather to make us question ourselves. I like the idea of planting seeds in people’s mind, that they can nourish… or not. It’s about sharing a vision. We’re so used to be told what to do, what to like and how to be… that’s why art is necessary… to break down those « walls »
This approach has been reshaping me into a kind of warrior. I feel the need to do something about our mental health, an urge to help... it feels vital. I have a huge need to show «the truth.» My truth as a woman that interviewed other women. I feel that we’ve lost control of our bodies, and our «place» in society. We are suffering a lot from those boxes we’ve been put in. Our bodies don’t look very natural anymore, our needs aren’t heard anymore. We are disconnected from our very nature and feel more and more in disillusion when it comes to who we actually are. We have been conditioned to strive to be the impossible. Listening more to who we are and fighting back feels important to me.
AURORA— Some truths arrive slowly — they bud, wait, then, all at once, they demand to be spoken even if they’re not yet tame. What feels ripe in your inner world right now and how are you tending or avoiding it?
Clélia— While working on Belles Mômes, I realized just how off the mark we are when it comes to women over 50. There’s no huge difference between a 25-year-old woman and a 50-year-old woman. We have the same desires in life, the same fantasies...
Younger and older women (from the same culture and similar upbringing) have the same needs. We all want to be loved the same way, we all have the same insecurities, we all express that we have never really felt good in our skin… and it’s getting more difficult with age and the society we’re living in.
I’ve learned that women in hetero relationships are suffering the most. That all we do is trying to be pretty and stay pretty for those who hurt us… and even if we are aware of this, we continue trying to be the impossible…. (Is it because men are still running the world ?!) I’ve learned that women feel like they exist mostly through their apparence than their wisdom or soul. In Rio, women want to live without men. They kind of gave up — and apparently feel better now. I’ve learned that sexuality is more and more important and we are all in need of good sex! This isn’t easy to find with men (hahahaha)
AURORA— We are always in relationship with what turns us on. Not just sexually, but soulfully, creatively, energetically. Sometimes it’s quiet, other times it’s dangerous. What’s quietly turning you on right now and how are you letting that energy move (or hide) in your life?
Clélia— Sometimes I feel sad to see that being a woman today often has nothing to do with truly being a woman. What society has made of us feels, to me, like a form of confinement — our bodies, our roles, our place, our sexuality. Sometimes I try to put on blinders to suffer less from this reality. And sometimes I’m furious — and want to explore what I truly love. To try and return to a natural state, free from all this conditioning...
So I leave. I travel alone to be able to breathe better. I surround myself with women (that think in a similar way.) I try to give my mind some rest walking through nature and think about what really matters to me. I try to accept the conflicts in my head between my way of being conditioned and my way of getting out of it. I sometimes stop talking, stop thinking. With those little moments, I find trust, safety and peace again.
Preorder Belles Mômes right here <3
