In an age dominated by cosmetic enhancements, filtered perfection and an ever-growing obsession with preserving youth, photographer Gil Hayun’s Age of Glory: Becoming Surface offers a refreshingly radical perspective. The ongoing fine art portrait series celebrates older women through the visual language of high fashion, transforming ageing from something to conceal into something to be proudly adorned.
International fashion and portrait photographer Gil Hayun, who is based in New York, is renowned for his bold, witty and technicolour imagery. His work has appeared in Vogue Italia and The New York Times, while collaborations with luxury brands including Gucci, YSL Beauty and Giambattista Valli have established him as one of contemporary photography’s most distinctive image-makers.
Yet Age of Glory marks a deeply personal departure from the world of commercial fashion. Conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic and recently presented at the Hospital of Emotions in Los Angeles as a large-scale installation and AI video artwork, the project explores ageing, visibility and identity with extraordinary tenderness and theatricality.
The Age of Glory series emerged from a simple but profound realisation. As Hayun explains: “The older I get, the more I feel – more understanding, more wisdom, more depth. The years don’t take from me; they add. Every experience I’ve lived through became another colour in my palette.”
This philosophy lies at the heart of Age of Glory. Hayun invited women from nursing homes and hospitals – women whom society often renders invisible – to participate in elaborate fashion shoots complete with styling, make-up, dramatic wigs and vivid colours. The intention was never to disguise their age, but rather to reveal another dimension of themselves. “I wanted to release their alter ego,” he says. “Who they always were, and never stopped being.”
The results are both joyous and moving. The women laugh, pose and radiate confidence before the camera, reconnecting with memories of their younger selves while embracing the richness of who they have become. For many participants, the experience proved transformative. “After the camera stopped, they told me: ‘I feel alive. I feel beautiful.'”
The portraits themselves are extraordinary acts of reclamation. Against a contemporary backdrop where youth is increasingly manufactured through injectables and cosmetic procedures, Hayun’s photographs insist that beauty does not diminish with age. Instead, wrinkles become evidence of a life fully lived, and ageing itself becomes a source of depth, character and colour.
“You can retouch a wrinkle,” Hayun observes. “You can’t retouch a lifetime.” It is a statement that cuts to the heart of today’s beauty culture. Age of Glory stands as a powerful antidote to homogenised ideals of perfection, celebrating individuality and the emotional resonance that comes with experience. “Age of Glory says that aging is not a decline – it’s colour. Not an erasure – it’s depth. And every photograph here is proof of that.”
The title itself carries an empowering message. For Hayun, glory is neither fleeting nor dependent on external validation. With its blend of high-fashion aesthetics and emotional authenticity, Age of Glory: Becoming Surface is more than a photographic series; it is a cultural statement. At a moment when society remains fixated on youth and cosmetic enhancement, Gil Hayun’s luminous portraits remind us that beauty is not found in the pursuit of perfection, but in the stories written across a lifetime.
All featured images from Gil Haydn’s photographic series Age of Glory © Gil Hayun
Glory is not something that happens to you. It is something you decide to wear – loud, unapologetic, long after the world stops watching.” Gil Hayun
