Jeanie, Will and Adina are three senior citizens connected by a special relationship. They view their bond as a shield from the loneliness of aging. I first met them at a retirement home in Los Angeles, where I had been photographing for three years. I saw as they approached the gate one night, and felt an immediate connection to them. Although I didn’t know the details of their love triangle, I intuitively felt that I had to find out who they were. Questioning a nurse a day later, she said to me, “Oh, you’re talking about the threesome.”
I was intrigued.
The trio set out on a daily adventure to coffee and doughnut shops, bus stops and street corners. I soon learned that the purpose of these outings was solace and a search for meaning. The trio sought to combat their alienation by literally integrating themselves in public streets. Yet, even when arm in arm, no one saw them. We often think that as we age, we lose the desires held in our youth. Actually, as a teenage photojournalist when I met the trio, I saw their behavior as a mirror to the fears of exclusion and desires for intimacy that I also carried. I related to their invisibility, which pained me during my childhood but has become my greatest asset as an immersive documentarian, because I can just fade into my empathy. As we walked down the streets of Hollywood, in a neighborhood of screenwriters, actors and filmmakers, the trio assumed the invisibility that each senior does. I would ask myself, “How is it that no one else sees these three human beings?
Why is it that I am the only one who sees them?”Years later, as I began to share this work with the public, I noticed that people are largely uncomfortable with this story. Perhaps it is because the trio doesn’t assume conventional notions associated with love, romance or partnership. They were unseen in public and shunned by their peers. They wanted to belong somewhere but only seemed to belong with each other. I wanted to belong somewhere, too. And my camera has been a catalyst for me to belong everywhere. But beyond challenging sociocultural norms about the elderly, the trio sheds light on fear of remoteness. At the end of each day, they return to their respective retirement homes. Under the surface of their aloneness, there is a desire for community, for their people. There was a sense that they were each yearning for their tribe, but that comfort comes with compromise, because Will cannot commit to one woman. Sitting with Jeanie one day in her apartment, she said to me, “Sharing Will is a thorn in your side.
A relationship between a man and a woman is private. It is a couple, not a trio.”My process is to essentially become the people I document by spending years with them as an observer-occupant, to create a safe space, to then become hidden in plain sight. I was about 17 when I met the trio, and I shadowed them for four years. We actually see, in the breakdown of social development, that adolescence and old age look strikingly alike, because both are periods of identity confusion. I identified with the women. But also with Will, who made me aware of the divide in me. The schism that we each often have about what we crave and the actuality of our situation. Before shooting this series, I was also in love with two different people who knew about each other, being the object over which they fought. But I also knew what it was like to be at the base of the triangle, like Jeanie or Adina, asking myself, “Why aren’t I enough?” I would look through my viewfinder and see three elderly figures, and it became impossible to deny that regardless of age, we were each in pursuit of filling the proverbial hole through other people. Perhaps the discomfort of looking at Jeanie, Will and Adina’s story is truly a reminder that even at the end of life, we may never reach the fantasy we have envisioned for ourselves.
Thank you for listening.