In her project The Last Chapter, Ida Kauter explores female aging as a complex space. The same woman, photographed in ever-changing clothes, poses and atmospheres, traverses identities that seem to belong to distant eras. It is a way of saying that aging does not need to be sugar-coated, but above all that it is not an end, but a territory where possibilities multiply rather than diminish.

Two usually separate imaginaries come together in the photos. On the one hand, the bourgeois living room and the body abandoned on the sofa, a familiar and almost reassuring image. On the other, images that evoke cabaret, nightlife, and a queer, performative look. This coexistence also comes from the conceptual approach of the work. As Kauter points out, “older women are frequently perceived through a lens of loss”, but that’s exactly why the project tries to flip that perspective, showing old age as an open field rather than a blank slate.

The work takes shape from “long, personal conversations”, says the photographer. Dialogues that touched on themes such as power, desire, invisibility and care, which became the underlying structure of the images. The poses are often rigid and theatrical, and yet the protagonist’s gaze always remains direct, sometimes ironic, sometimes harsh.

A recurring detail is the hands, which are sometimes illuminated in the foreground or engaged in small gestures like little choreographies. It is through them that the images acquire emotional tension.

Kauter describes the project as “a utopian, staged perspective” that does not attempt to offer solutions, but rather to “spark a new way of seeing”. And indeed, The Last Chapter presents old age as a phase in which identity, desire and imagination can still be reinvented. A final chapter that, instead of closing, wants to open up.