MIRJA MARIA THIEL - EXPOSURE INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL

"Lilly and Waltraud" is part of my series All This Love (2017-) that reflects on a topic underrepresented or even tabooed in the public mind: sexuality in older and high age couples.

Against the background of aging societies, this life-affirming issue should be included in the discourse about old age, which is far too often limited to discussing challenging aspects like, for example, the security of the pension system, the dramatic rise of dementia diseases, and the nursing crisis.

When I first met Lilly, 85, by herself in a restaurant at the German seaside in July 2020, she told me: "Twelve years ago I fell in love with Waltraud, a scholar of German philology, who taught a creative writing class I attended." Since then, they have been a couple. Both were married before and Lilly has two children. Waltraud, 76, was born as Walter. In the ‘80s she received her sex reassignment surgery in Germany. Her mental and physical transition from her birth sex to her felt gender identity was a long and difficult journey, which she documented in several autobiographical books and public lectures. About her partnership with Lilly, she says: "I have never been so happy and fulfilled in my whole life!" Both women have strong and engaging personalities. One week later, I returned to Travemünde to make photos of them.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Hamburg in 1971, I am a German photographer with a background in literature whose approach to photography is rooted in a fascination for storytelling as a means of rising to challenges, living with change, and showing compassion with humanity’s and my own vulnerability. During a four-year stay in Switzerland, I rediscovered my delight in photography while documenting my three young children. Aged 42, I decided to study Photojournalism and Documentary Photography in Hanover, Germany. As a visual author I feel indebted to the documentary tradition, but at the same time I pursue a subjective and modern approach through in-depth engagement with my subjects. My long-term work focuses on the elderly: the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on the emotional landscape of caregivers in Farewell Sonata and the affected individual in Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man, and the exploration of eroticism in old age couples in All This Love.