Orange dress : HM @hm

I have always had a huge passion for Fashion . Starting with modelling at the age of 18 and stopped again at 25 , as my body and intuition told me I needed to move on with my path. I quit from one day to another and slowly started doing a bit of makeup on models for tests and that evolved into a career as a makeup artist for 5 years.
I always loved the whole process of creating images so i never really fell in love with the makeup itself it was the process I was a part of that kept me going.

So after the 5 years doing makeup  I was at an age where many personal thing happened and i wanted to look inward and deal with myself so i looked around and ended up taking an education as a therapist based on principles from Chinese medicine . 
In this process i had to go through a lot of therapy (to be a therapist you need to) and I really discovered many thing about my self and it was an amazing spiritual growth and it somehow opened my intuition even more. Because of this I started dreaming about big black and white portraits of models , every night for a month I was dreaming about photos,  and at last I was like “ok what does this mean”, and it forced me to buy my first camera because maybe i needed to capture these images that kept me awake . The Camera was digital so i could immediately see what i was capturing and I just LOVED every part of it. I just had to learn more so I took the Photographer education here in Denmark (where i live) but as soon as i finished , I packed my family and moved to LA which I’ve always had been attracted by, because of the light and nature that surrounds it…

Bikini : Calvin Klein @calvinklein
Red dress : Line Markvardsen @linemarkvardsen

While all these things happened in my life,  there has always been an underlying wish or almost a rebel inside of me wanting to change the worlds perception of beauty . At a very early stage of my makeup career and photographer life,  I wanted to show diverse beauty and I loved to choose models that people didn’t expect for a certain job, and then show them that they were sooo wrong. Here i am talking about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and age… I somehow hoped that this desire could touch or maybe make someone feel seen and accepted when they saw my images and my choice of model… 

Black dress : vintage

So this leads us to this present moment,  where I am at the age of 48 and I started modelling again. I never saw this coming,  but now it feels like the most natural thing and a perfect extension of my desire of showing diversity. The only difference is, that this time I`am representing myself , I am the someone that would get touched , that needs to feel seen and accepted in a society where everything is about youth and Anti Age.  In a society like this , women with age gets invisible and sometimes seen as not doing their best to look their best , unless they choose to chance their looks . 
I honestly don’t care about what women do to feel their best , but I think the lack of natural looking women with age in The fashion magazines and campaigns is a huge mistake that especially will bring a lot of disillusions and stress for the coming generations of women. 
I hope by putting myself out there , I can be a part of a PRO AGE movement of women showing that it’s okay to Age,  and finally that its actually an honour to have lived many years and that our wrinkles and spots tells a beautiful story of a live lived…

Anja 

Black suit: NAKD @nakdfashion

Model and Artist: Anja Poulsen @anjapoulsen_creative_life www.anjapoulsen.com
Photographer: Conni Hvidberg