Beyond Success is a collaborative photographic series about the emotional transition of leaving a career -- and its familiar structures, community, and rewards -- for a next step that is an uncertain mix of loss and possibility.
My partner in this project is my husband, a senior litigator in a large law firm. He was fortunate-- he found the work he loved early in life, work that has helped shape his identity for decades. Now in his late sixties, he looks back on his career, both the aspects he loves and those that have become tiresome. It is a moment when the difficulty of letting go vies with the excitement of discovering what else there may yet be time for.
When I began this project almost four years ago, I set out with the objective of making a visual record of the ordinary moments in his working life and in our life together, scenes that represent both our personal history and the tensions of this time of life. Over time, we both found that the process of making these photographs together served as a catalyst for life review.
It has been, and continues to be, a personal journey, still unresolved. But we know from discussions with our contemporaries that many others are thinking about the issue of how the role of work in our lives evolves as we age.