mid: being the part in the middle or midst; occupying a middle position

When affixed to the word “life,” this benign prefix takes on crisis connotations, while somehow simultaneously conveying boredom. Midlife lacks the seduction of youth and acumen of old age. It is not here, nor there. Photographer Elinor Carucci’s monograph Midlife upends these interpretations. Neither mundane nor catastrophic, it is an arresting documentary of a universal life stage defined by aging parents, greying hair, growing children, and the conflicting emotions they precipitate. It is also a record of the period’s rewards: an amplified enjoyment of life, stronger connections to family, and feelings of personal liberation and acceptance.

Carucci’s journey to this enlightened place is charted by her greater oeuvre. Her first book, Closer, reveals a young woman reflected in her parents and partner. In her next, Mother, the barometer becomes her burgeoning belly, then babies. Midlife, instead, turns the audit inward, examining vestiges of past identities—lustrous locks turned grey, taut muscles turned slack, passion turned into partnership, toddlers turned teenagers, a uterus removed—to decipher what remains once external qualifiers fall away.

By placing her body at the center of the work, Carucci challenges the notion that middle-aged women are invisible. By commemorating the phase’s common symbols, she rebels against the dismissal of middle age as a transition. In midlife, her images suggest, we become the axis around which younger and older generations orbit, the core that binds the poles together—the middle.

The middle of anything, unscrutinized, is forgettable. Examined, Carucci hypothesizes, it becomes a bellwether: the legacy of our life to date and an astute map for navigating the future.

PUBLISHED IN PLAYGIRL MAGAZINE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELINOR CARUCCI