Denise Boomkens: AndBloom The art of aging Unapologetically
Denise Boomkens launched the AndBloom project on Instagram in 2018, to create a ‘happy place for women over 40’ – a community where women can be themselves and where aging is celebrated instead of feared. In this, her first book, she shares her own experiences of aging and brings together portraits and interviews with more than 100 extraordinary ‘ordinary’ women to create both a gloriously illustrated celebration of female beauty over 40 and an empowering handbook to aging happily.
ebook / ISBN-13: 9781784727901
AndBloom originated from my love for photography, fashion, lifestyle and, consciousness. After I turned 40 I started to miss inspiring websites with coolness and authenticity towards aging. #AndBloom
I am a photographer fueled by compassion, curiosity, and a drive to change the current view of society on aging.
In my younger days, I worked as a fashion model. Living in Milano, Paris, and London, I traveled the world to work for many clients. When I was 25 I moved back to the Netherlands to become a photographer. After finishing art school at 29 I started working as a photographer and loved every minute of it, I loved fashion, beauty, and taking pictures of beautiful people. I worked all over the world from Tokyo to New York, from Capetown to Seoul.
The years passed by and while approaching the ‘BIG 40’ I began to notice a certain dissatisfaction about aging, especially amongst the women around me. Exploring this dissatisfaction in my work and private life, made me realize that it occurs not only in women over 40 but also in many younger women. Young women that worry about getting older, middle-aged women who think they no longer count after a certain age or when they begin to show signs of aging.
Women, young and old(-er), that follow the often unrealistic example of the (social) media. The anti-aging campaigns using models barely over the age of 20, or Hollywood women that have everything ‘done’ to look younger. It can be, of course, a bit confusing, looking at celebrities your age that look at least 15 years younger than you do because of great light, filters, Botox, fillers, or other (radical) facial treatments.
Giving birth to my son at 40 changed my perspective. An awareness came over me, I call it ‘motherhood’ and growing up. Everything that was once important to me was suddenly less important. If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would be a mother one day … I would have declared them crazy. During early motherhood, I was given time to think about my work. I decided to give it a new, more meaningful direction. On an empty Thai beach, during endless walks with my 2-year-old son, I decided to start this new project called AndBloom.
It was also on that beach I realized I was having a kind of an identity crisis. I no longer felt very young but also not old, yet I didn’t belong to the youth in my early forties, but I didn’t feel middle-aged either. I felt I was at a turning point in my life, physically and mentally. Talking with women around me made me realize I wasn’t the only one feeling like this. Many women feel a turning point around their 40’s and it’s not at all negative. 40-Something is a great age, you are old enough to know what you want and you still have time enough to do whatever you want. I know women that started new companies, women who started a new education, made a career switch, had another baby (or 2), changed husbands, or left for a solo trip around the world.
AndBloom is an age-positive community, I photograph women of all ages over 40, beautiful, real women, to capture the beautiful journey of aging. The women that participate in the project I call Bloomers. AndBloom, to continue blooming and become the woman you’re supposed to be.
What started with my mother’s first portrait in June 2018 after my return from Thailand grew within three years into an Instagram community of more than 165k women worldwide.
