Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time

A Photographic Meditation on Aging, Motherhood, and Becoming

Seasons of Time is an intimate photographic exploration of transformation, identity, and the passage of time. Through deeply personal imagery, photographer Nathalie Rubens presents a visual dialogue between two interconnected yet profoundly different stages of life: the emergence into young adulthood and the transition into post-menopausal womanhood. The project brings together portraits of Rubens and her daughter Ruby, creating a powerful meditation on aging, family bonds, and the cyclical nature of human experience.

Blending autobiography with universal themes, this body of work invites viewers to reflect on the inevitability of time passing and the emotional landscapes that accompany life’s most significant transitions.

A Visual Dialogue Between Two Generations
At the heart of Seasons of Time lies a compelling dual narrative. On one side is Ruby, standing at the threshold of independence, her life opening toward possibility, self-definition, and discovery. On the other is Nathalie Rubens herself, navigating the often unspoken transition into menopause and later adulthood.

While society frequently celebrates the milestones of youth—coming of age, first independence, and the forging of identity—the parallel transformation experienced by women entering menopause remains largely absent from cultural conversation. Rubens’ work addresses this silence, placing middle-aged womanhood at the center of artistic inquiry.

Through portraits that are both tender and unflinchingly honest, mother and daughter become mirrors for one another: two lives moving in opposite directions along the same timeline.

The Unspoken Transition Into Middle Age
In her foreword, Nathalie Rubens reflects on the emotional disorientation that accompanies this stage of life. For many years, motherhood defined her identity. With her children growing older and stepping into their own independence, she confronts a profound shift in purpose.

The photographs capture this moment of redefinition—an inner landscape marked by vulnerability, uncertainty, and reflection. The absence of clear societal narratives for menopause and aging leaves many women navigating this transformation without guideposts.

Rubens’ project challenges that invisibility. By turning the camera on herself, she brings visibility, dignity, and emotional depth to a stage of life that is rarely portrayed with such honesty.

Ruby and the Promise of Becoming
In contrast, Ruby embodies the anticipation of independence. Her coming of age represents expansion rather than loss—the exhilaration of stepping into the world and shaping a life of her own choosing.

This juxtaposition creates the emotional core of the project: the simultaneous unfolding of two rites of passage. One is defined by beginnings, the other by transformation and re-evaluation.

Together, they reveal that aging is not a linear story of decline, but a series of evolving identities.

Landscapes as Emotional Anchors
Throughout the photographic series, quiet landscape images punctuate the portraits. These scenes reflect the emotional rhythm of the narrative, grounding personal experience within the broader cycles of nature.

The most recurring motif is that of two tall trees standing side by side. Rooted and resilient, they endure changing seasons together—sometimes bare, sometimes flourishing, always connected.

These trees echo the relationship between Nathalie and Ruby: two individuals shaped by time yet bound by an enduring bond. Their presence suggests continuity, resilience, and the quiet strength found in companionship across generations.

The Emotional Complexity of Middle-Aged Womanhood
In the accompanying essay The Quiet, Inevitable Power of Middle-Aged Womanhood, photographer and writer Elinor Carucci describes the emotional tension present throughout the series.

The images exist in a space where fear and courage coexist. There is longing, uncertainty, and grief—but also resilience and profound honesty. Middle-aged womanhood, as portrayed in Seasons of Time, is neither diminished nor invisible; it is a stage defined by emotional depth, self-knowledge, and quiet power.

The photographs reveal that vulnerability can coexist with strength, and that transformation—at any age—holds its own form of beauty.

A Universal Story Told Through Intimate Photography
Although rooted in a specific family relationship, Seasons of Time resonates far beyond the personal. The project explores universal themes such as the shifting identity of motherhood, the cultural silence surrounding menopause, and the emotional complexity of aging. It also reflects on the evolving relationship between generations and the cyclical rhythms that shape every human life.

Through minimalism, stillness, and introspection, the photographs encourage viewers to contemplate their own journeys through time.

Reframing the Narrative of Aging
In a culture that often prioritizes youth, Seasons of Time offers a necessary reframing. Aging is not portrayed as disappearance, but as transformation—an unfolding season filled with reflection, wisdom, and resilience.

By placing mother and daughter within the same visual narrative, Nathalie Rubens reminds us that every beginning carries an ending, and every ending contains the seeds of renewal.

The project ultimately becomes a quiet yet powerful tribute to the complexity of womanhood across generations.

Seasons of Time stands as both a personal archive and a universal reflection—an artistic reminder that identity is never fixed, and that each stage of life carries its own beauty, uncertainty, and strength.

Nathalie Rubens
Nathalie Rubens is a fine-art photographer based in New York City and Dutchess County. Holding a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Foreign Policy and Economics from Johns Hopkins University, Rubens has previously worked in journalism and international development. Drawing on this multifaceted background, she has developed a striking photographic practice. A member of Soho Photo Gallery, Seasons of Time marks her debut photobook.
www.nathalierubens.com
@nathalie.rubens

Elinor Carucci
Elinor Carucci is a renowned New York–based photographer whose work has been exhibited internationally and is held in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Brooklyn Museum. She is the recipient of the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has published five monographs to date.
www.elinorcarucci.com
@elinorcarucci

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

By Anastasia Samoylova

Publisher : Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art

2025 | 144 pages

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast opens a vast, quietly unsettling portrait of the American East Coast — one in which nostalgia, dislocation and transformation are sewn into the landscape itself. In this new monograph, Samoylova retraces the route pioneered by Berenice Abbott in 1954, journeying from Florida to Maine to revisit the places Abbott once documented, and to observe what has become of them decades later. Her images — in vivid color and stark black and white — reveal the tension between myth and reality, between promises of progress and the traces of decay or displacement.

Where once small towns and coastal communities had a certain stillness, Samoylova finds change carved into facades and roadside signs, into suburban sprawl and shuttered shopfronts. She frames these scenes with a photographer’s patience and a poet’s sensitivity — capturing abandoned diners, empty motels, decaying houses, ghostly intersections. At the same time, there is stubborn life: occasional portraits of people, wildlife, reminders that behind every sign of decline, someone, something endures.

Her book does not simply document physical places. It traces the shifting contours of identity, belonging and memory in a nation where the open road has long symbolized freedom — and where that ideal has become tangled with consumerism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic upheaval. Through Atlantic Coast, Samoylova asks whether the “American Dream” remains intact, or if it has fractured along with the towns her car passes through.

Reading this volume is to experience a slow, attentive journey — as a witness, as a traveller, as someone invited to reconsider what America has become. Her photographs linger, subtly unsettling the viewer’s assumptions about beauty, progress and decline. In its silence and restraint, the book whispers that memory, identity and place are fragile — and that every road carries stories worth listening to.

Lisette Model

By Lisette Model

Publisher : Prestel

2026 | 256 pages

Lisette Model presents a definitive exploration of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, whose bold vision reshaped the way urban life and society were captured on film. This stunning hardcover features over 200 reproductions, ranging from her early Parisian portraits to the striking images of New York streets that defined her career.

Model’s photographic journey began in Vienna and matured in France, where her keen eye for social observation developed. Early works, including portraits of idle elites in Nice, reveal her sharp sense of critique tempered by empathy. These images, at once confrontational and intimate, established her as a formidable observer of human behavior. After emigrating to the United States, Model brought this incisive approach to New York, producing iconic images such as the Coney Island Bather and the Cafe Metropole series, which juxtapose vitality, vulnerability, and the stark contrasts of city life.

Her lens captured both the glamour and grit of her surroundings: the bustling streets of the Lower East Side, the grandeur of high-society gatherings, and the nuanced everyday gestures that reveal the inner lives of her subjects. Model’s distinctive framing, bold compositions, and unflinching attention to human detail created a visual language that remains influential to this day.

This collection also includes lesser-known works from her travels along the U.S. West Coast and Venezuela, highlighting her continued exploration of character, form, and place. Insights from scholar Walter Moser contextualize her work within the broader trajectory of twentieth-century photography, illuminating her enduring impact as both an artist and a teacher.

Lisette Model is more than a retrospective; it is an immersive journey into a world seen through a lens of unvarnished reality and poetic observation. It celebrates a photographer whose fearless engagement with her subjects, combined with her artistic rigor, forged a path for generations of street and documentary photographers, offering an essential resource for enthusiasts and scholars alike.

All About Lisette Model

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy

By Fred Herzog

Publisher : Hatje Cantz

2026 | 144 pages

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy opens a fresh chapter on the streets of Vancouver and beyond, offering the public previously unseen images from the archives of a man whose eye for color and life defied the conventions of his time. Herzog’s work in the 1950s and 60s stands out because he chose Kodachrome — a decision nearly heretical when art photography still equated seriousness with black and white. What emerges through his Leica’s lens is a world awash in warm reds, neon signs, and the soft glow of streetlights — a world that feels alive, tactile, and tender.

After emigrating from Germany to Vancouver in 1953 and working by day as a medical photographer, Herzog spent his evenings and weekends roaming the city streets. He captured storefronts, everyday people going about their lives, second-hand shops, Chinatown alleys, decaying cars, neon reflections — details often overlooked, but rich with character. He treated photography not as artifice but as observation, documenting modern urban life with precision and empathy. His photographs turned ordinary city scenes into a tribute to human presence and urban texture.

The volume collects these rediscovered gems alongside his best-known photos, offering a more complete portrait of a photographer who stubbornly trusted color when many of his peers turned away. The images span Vancouver and also trace Herzog’s travels to the U.S., the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, showing a restless spirit and a worldwide curiosity. Each frame is infused with intimacy, subtle humor, and a respect for the quotidian — light on one face, a reflection in a shop window, the curve of a car hood shimmering in rain.

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy is not just a homage to a photographer but a statement about memory, time, and beauty in the urban fabric. It reminds us how much of a city’s soul lives in small moments — a street sign, a storefront, a quiet onlooker — and how color, long seen as frivolous in serious photography, can reveal more truth than monochrome ever could.

All About Fred Herzog

Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics and Practices

By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time

A Photographic Meditation on Aging, Motherhood, and Becoming

Purchase a Copy

Selected Books