Literary Hub » Photographic Reflections on Gendered Aging, Idealized Beauty, and Maternal Duty

Ahndraya Parlato Explores Transformation and the Passage of Time Through Photos and Letters

With TIME TO KILL, I take a look at gendered getting old, unpacking the beliefs of magnificence, caretaking, and maternal and home responsibility imposed on ladies over the course of their lives.

My pictures—portraits, landscapes, nonetheless lives, and areas each huge and claustrophobic—reveal cultural double requirements and impermanence.

These photos are interwoven with letters to an ambiguous, ageless, and maybe illusory recipient. Through these mediums, I reckon with quite a lot of bodily and emotional experiences, together with the disjuncture between how we see ourselves and the way others see us as we age.

I image transformation and the passing of time as each brutal and releasing and interrogate selfhood, motherhood, sacrifice, and visibility in an unflinching confrontation with what it means to be mortal.

Ahndraya Parlato, As Long as You Will Want To, from TIME TO KILL (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.
Ahndraya Parlato, Colleen, from TIME TO KILL (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

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Dear D,

I used to be sitting inside a café. From my place, I might see each the road and a big round mirror inside, reflecting the contents of the sidewalk. As you handed, I used to be struck by your type, the way in which your form minimize by the heavy air. I used to be additionally greatly surprised by an asymmetry, one I couldn’t instantly place. It wasn’t till later, mendacity in mattress, that I noticed: the mirror had mirrored a unique stability of our bodies than have been on the sidewalk. That’s after I understood—you had no reflection.

I can’t say for positive whether or not you might be or aren’t actual. I’m now not positive I do know the distinction. And, whereas I do have a mirrored image, I’m typically shocked to see it, because it often doesn’t match the image I’ve of myself in my thoughts.

Us people, we’re all going to die. But not you, you’ll stay ceaselessly—by no means getting old. What age is your physique and what number of years have you ever existed? What motivates you to get away from bed every day—strikes you ahead—with out the inevitability of your mortality? Also, is there an age restrict to sporting jean jackets? Should I maintain them, or allow them to go to make room for one thing else?

Yours,

A

Ahndraya Parlato, Quiet Down, from TIME TO KILL (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.
Ahndraya Parlato, Gina Backbend, from TIME TO KILL (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

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TIME TO KILL (2026) by Ahndraya Parlato, revealed by MACK is accessible now.

Header picture credit score:v(L): Ahndraya Parlato, Zelma, from TIME TO KILL (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.v(R): Ahndraya Parlato, Mimi, from TIME TO KILL (MACK, 2026). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.