Does the idea of older people having sex make you squeamish? Does it repel or gross you out? Do you regard it with disbelief and worthy only of a joke? Do you think of older people having sex as anything but hot, sensual, arousing and real?
Montreal-based photographer and filmmaker Jean Malek shot an image that may just change your mind. The photo was a piece of commissioned artwork for a calendar on challenging taboos: Old people having sex was one of them.
Malek told The Huffington Post that the man and the woman in the photo had never met before the day of the shoot. Malek met them both first privately to explain what would take place. "I wanted to show that older people having sex is a sensual, beautiful thing," he said. "Even though no actual sex would be occurring in the process of the photo shoot." The man is 92 and the woman 74.
Malek, who is 32, took great care in styling the photo. He set a dish of peppermints in the scene "because older people always carry peppermints with them," and he used vintage wallpaper with clocks to suggest "time passing and aging." To create the suggestion that even couples together a long time can feel passion, he shot a portrait of the fully dressed couple and framed it. It gets "knocked down" along with the rest of the objects in the passion of the (fake) moment.
The reaction to the photo has been overwhelmingly positive, he said. "It's a beautiful shot where we show something that really happens," he said. Readers, your thoughts?
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