Wise Women: A Celebration of Their Insights, Courage, and Beauty

This is a book I would be honored to given to me by my daughter...or anyone! Unfortunately, my mother didn't feel the same way. She's in her 70's and thought I was insulting her. The women in the book are my role models...

All the while I was writing my own book about the wisdom, joy and power in being an 'Elderwoman' - i.e. a woman who embraces the aging process, instead of shrinking from it - I wished I could illustrate it with pictures. For as we know, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the true Elderwoman is a delight to behold. Her joy, her wisdom, her power, and a thousand stories, are all there, in her face. But I am no photographer. I had to make do with words.So when I came upon this beautiful book I fell in love with it immediately. Now, everywhere I go to talk about my own books or to do workshops with older women, I take Joyce Tenneson's book with me, and pass it around. Every woman I have shown it to has loved it, as I do. Compared to these portraits, the bland faces of young models look like clones or Barbie dolls. Here is REAL BEAUTY, revealed.

I bought this for my 62 year old mother. She's a psycotherapist and leads several women's groups. I figured it would be perfect for her waiting room.She loves it so much it has yet to leave her house. It is about time someone started to show the beauty of women over 60. These women are beautiful, and the photos are inspiring to men and women of all ages.

There's a certain kind of beuty which we have been forced to forget: that of our mothers and grandmothers - the goddesses of our lives - this book is the rebirth of these women as the guiding beauties of mankind. This will be the set of photographs via which Tenneson will set her name in the history of western art.

When I was a child, because both my parents worked, it was my grandmother who essentially raised me. To me she was an all-knowing, all-powerful person, and quite a beautiful woman to my adoring and fearing child eyes. Many years after her death, and with a mind now conditioned to see skeletal models representing someone's ideal of beauty, it took this brilliant book by Tenneson to rekindle the power and beauty of women aged 65 and older. Tenneson applies her formidable portraiture skills with an artistic ferocity that leaves no doubt in place to the fact that in doing this project, she discovered a lot of issues with her own self and perception of beauty and fear. This is one of those rare photography books that I sense are destined to become a keystone in contemporary photography and re-enforce Tenneson's place among the elite of the fine arts photography world. But more importantly, it represents a powerful alternative challenge to what has been forced fed to us about beauty and power, and help some of us to remember fondly a loving, powerful grandmother.