YESTERDAY – THE TIMELESS BEAUTY (Cinderella)
2014
Film, 3:07 min.

Between mask and skin, Cinderella unfolds.
The mask protects, the skin remembers.
What usually remains hidden becomes visible — quietly and without pathos.
Age appears here not as loss, but as presence.

Cinderella is a photographic and filmic work developed with women over the age of seventy and eighty. I invited them to step once more into their old swimsuits — garments that belonged to another time and to a different social image of femininity.

At the beginning, I offered them masks from the Swabian Fasnacht tradition. These masks are deliberately exaggerated and rooted in fixed roles and character types. They function as protection — as a way of being visible without being fully exposed. Entering through the mask was easier. From there, trust could develop.

In contrast to the mask, the skin becomes central. While the mask asserts a figure, the skin reveals lived time. It is striking how the body remembers: once inside the swimsuit, posture changes, gestures return, a certain self-assurance reappears — not as a return to youth, but as embodied memory.

To this day, we are hardly accustomed to seeing aging skin in public imagery. While discussions about body diversity and different silhouettes have become more present, aging itself remains largely taboo. At the same time, we invest increasing energy in keeping skin young, in optimizing and correcting it, guided by an ideal that privileges youth and permanence.

Cinderella does not respond with provocation, but with quiet presence. Wrinkles, softness, and fragility remain visible. Age is not concealed but carried. Beauty appears here not as a promise of youth, but as an expression of experience and dignity.