Ellen Warner and Women on Life After 50

Ellen Warner

Author, The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After 50, Photojournalist, Travel Writer

What makes you feel like a grown up?

Feeling confident about who I am. When you're younger, you're more concerned with what people think about you. When you grow up, so to speak, whatever age that is, you know who you are and that's enough. Although in one sense, you never need to grow up. You always want to approach everything with wonder and excitement like a child does. But I think the big difference is that you do feel confident about who you are.

What do you refuse to give an F about?

It’s sort of difficult for me, because I don't really think that way. But I suppose the things I don't care about are people's lineages or how much money they have or that kind of thing. I'm just really interested in who they are.

What’s the best gift you received?

A really close friend of mine gave me a ring on my 50th birthday. She got it on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and it's an old Roman seal that they would stamp letters with. When I got married, I got a diamond engagement ring, but as a photographer, I just don't feel comfortable wearing a diamond. So it was a wonderful present and I've worn it every day since—literally.

The second half, seen ‘round the world.

You spent 15 years working on your book—does it feel rewarding to finish, or do you miss working on it?

I'm thrilled that it's finished. I would love to do a second edition because I love meeting the women, but I really like having the product out there and I like having it for the women to see. 

There are a couple of women in the book who are very famous, and a lot who aren't. For example, there is one woman in Oman who had a hard life. She's illiterate because her mother died when she was very young and her stepmother said, "You don't need to go to school. You can clean the house and make yourself useful.” She was married off very young and then had three children. Her husband left her for a woman in Pakistan and took the three children with him, the youngest being two months old. Then she was married again and that husband was okay, but he left her. She then worked in a factory, but she couldn't drive because she was illiterate. There was a taxi driver who drove her every day to the factory and they fell in love and now they are happily married. And her children have come back from Pakistan and they're all close.

I want her to see the book, to see herself in the pictures and to have somebody translate what she's said so she knows her voice is being heard. She won't know who Olivia de Havilland or some of the others are, but to see herself in this company of women and know that people halfway around the world are reading about what she says is really important to me.

How did this project start? Did your intention change over time?

I started going to an island called Patmos every June when I was in my 50s. The way I get to know a place is to photograph people in it. I was photographing a beautiful French woman who had just turned 70. I said to her, "What does it feel like to be 70? How have you changed, your interests, your values, that kind of thing. How do you look to the future? And what advice would you give me about what it is going to be like?" I thought, that's what I want to know. I want to know what it's like to be 70, 80 or 90 years old. The oldest woman in the book is 107. What does that feel like?

That was a constant. What changed is that I'd never interviewed people before. At first I just had this list of questions. And then I thought, well, this is really boring unless people know who these women are. And so I asked them to give a recap of their life and I put pieces of that in as well.

How did you choose and find the women to photograph and interview? I assume there were more than 40—how did you narrow it down?

Sometimes it was through friends. Sometimes one woman would say, "You must do my friend so and so," and occasionally the first woman didn't end up in the book and the second woman did. On occasion, I just saw somebody and approached them. We were taking a vacation in Bali and I saw this beautiful woman. I said to the woman who was managing the house, "Who is that?" And she said, "She's my auntie." I didn’t realize there they call every older woman “auntie”. I said, "Well, I'd like to interview her, would you translate?" And she turned out to be the sacred healer of the village. It was  fascinating. But the great thing about this project was that, before, if I was photographing tribal groups in north Vietnam or cashmere goats in Mongolia, I had to go to those places. But wherever you go, there are women! They're 52% of the population, so it's always possible to find somebody while you’re on any kind of trip.

The criteria for narrowing it down (yes, there were more) was that the women didn't have to be beautiful, but they had to be interesting looking and they had to open up in the interview process. Sometimes I'd get a great interview and then the picture wasn't so great or vice versa. I also wanted to have diversity in the final group.

We often bemoan the lack of realistic images of people over 50—why do you think that they are so hard to come by, and did you sense any self consciousness on the part of your subjects?

I think that used to be more true than it is today. I also think it's true everywhere, to be sure, but I think it's a little bit more of an American thing than a European thing. I mean, if you look at European women, they seem to be a lot less conscious of every wrinkle. And were the women self-conscious? Everybody's self-conscious when they have their portrait taken to start with. And I’ve always felt that as a photographer, you have to be half a shrink and half knowing how to click the camera. The big battle is just making people feel comfortable and feeling like they can be who they really are.

You include women from diverse cultures and backgrounds, but were there any strong commonalities that jumped out at you? 

The second half is definitely better than the first. I mean, that was really the theme, and I've seen that in my own life. You have time and you can be who you are. I think it's so hard for women in their twenties, thirties and forties. You may find out what your career is going to be. You find out who your partner's going to be, if you want a partner. You may have young children. And you're trying to climb up the greasy pole in your profession, perhaps. There's so much going on. When you reach your second half, you can concentrate on the things that you really care about. It also tends to be a bit more spiritual and I think that's partially because you can see the end of life. I don’t think about it a lot, but it is there, lurking about. But also you have more time to be spiritual. You have more time to think about things that really matter as opposed to getting through the day in the best way possible, which I think is often what happens when you're younger.

What's the most surprising thing you learned from this project? 

I think it was the universality of feelings. I mean, people are people everywhere, but certainly the universal conviction that the second half is better. That did surprise me.

We won't ask you to choose just one of your babies, but did you have a few favorite women? 

Well, I would just say that the 40 who are in the book are my favorites. You have to fall in love with your subject a bit and I think I did that with all of them.

What do you hope the reader will take away from your book?

Well, I hope that younger people will look forward to the second half of life and won't fear it. We so often think, "Oh God, I don't want to get old." I want people to feel that they really have something to look forward to.