The Reset: Photographer Barbara Micelli Pennington on celebrating women at all stages of life
· 18.04.2024 · 23:37:01 ··· ··· Thursday ·· 4 (4)
WKYC Channel 3 Visit Barbara Micelli Pennington's Boston Heights Studio, and it would be easy to assume she's been behind the camera her whole life. But in a recent conversation with 3News anchor Christi Paul, she explains that while her interest in photography started at a young age, she didn't have the opportunity to practice her craft until she was in her sixties.
"I got married young when I was 19, had four kids by the time I was 24, and there was never much money," she recalled. "And then I got divorced and I had to find a job. I had no skills, I had no education."
So she put that dream on hold, eventually securing a job as a patient representative at a local hospital in order to support her young family. There, she was also in charge of 240 volunteers — impressive women that she could see, weren't always shown the respect she felt they deserved.
"I thought, someday, I'm going to do something about women of age because they're overlooked. And my own mother used to say to me, Barb, when you get to be my age, you become insignificant."
Barbara says felt that herself as she grew older. But in 2004, she joined the Cleveland Photographic Society because that love for photography was still alive in her. And when she started to learn about digital modality, she says, it was like 'magic.'
"I thought, oh my God, this is it. This is it. So I was hooked from that moment on," she said with a smile.
One day while out shopping, she noticed a beautiful woman sitting behind a desk, and that promise she'd made to herself so long ago showed itself.
"I looked at her and I thought, my God, all those things in my head from 20 years ago about doing something about women of age came back to me when I saw her. Edna Bradford Ratner, this elegant woman."
She approached Edna, sharing an idea for a photography book she wanted to produce with her on the cover. And while Edna initially dismissed the idea, Barbara was persistent and eventually convinced her to be in a book she would eventually call, “Extraordinary Women from an Ordinary Place,” featuring more than 50 senior women from Northeast Ohio.
Edna was Barbara's first model, but far from her last.
READ MORE: https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/the-reset-photographer-barbara-micelli-pennington-on-celebrating-women-at-all-stages-of-life/95-5a577715-e5e6-4e2f-91af-3c9dbfb7916d
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