Elderly People Look At Their Younger Reflections In This Beautiful Photo Series By Tom Hussey:

Tom Hussey is an advertising and portrait photographer from American, who created a series of highly conceptual photographs titled “Reflections”, showing elderly people looking pensively at their younger self reflection in a mirror (The Phoblographer).

For all of these four photograph, it is a reflection relating to “memories” and “characteristics”, and these photographs is all from an eye-perspective, which makes it easier for the audience to be connected with them, especially if the person in the photo is making direct eye contact with the camera. Since Tom mostly taken photo of elderly models and then reflecting the younger models in the mirror, it can shows a society change or improvements. For example, we can make a comparison between the younger model and the elder model, whether is how they dress or how they look, it can shows how the society improvements lead to changes on people’s life.

For this series, he was inspired by a world war II veteran who said ” I can believe I’m going to be 80. I felt like I just come back from the war. I look in the mirror and see this old guy.” This motivate Hussey to take photographs of older people and younger people, and it can help them to recall memories of their early life. For these photograph, the artist uses rule of thirds, they are placed in either the right side or the left side, and the others are placed in the middle of the frame, the main focus of this photograph is on the people, so the artist has left some empty spaces for the photograph. And, there are always light and shade in the photograph, for some of the pictures is not that obvious, but it did creates a contrast of the lighting. The facial expression is very obvious, sometimes the younger has the same emotions as the elder, but for some of the photographs has difference emotions.

This photograph inspired me a lot because first the theme is very important and meaningful, it can evoke the audience’s emotions and empathy. And the mirror not only can show the reflection of a person, it can also reflect a person’s “life experience and characteristics”. So, I think it will be very cool if I’m taking similar photograph as the one that Tom Hussey has taken.

Citations:

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2016/12/06/tom-hussey-shows-reflections-younger-self-mirrors