On Their Own:

This project by New York-based photographer Sara Bennett sets out to create portraits of women over the age of ninety who live alone in their own homes.

“After my mother died at the age of 93, independent and healthy until the last few days of her life, I began thinking more about women of her age who live alone, have outlived their partners and most of their friends, and do not want to be uprooted. Despite our ongoing conversations and despite my awareness that our time together was not endless, there were so many aspects of my mother’s life that are still mysterious to me. And so I set out to meet women of her generation — women over the age of ninety—who live alone. By photographing them and listening to their stories, I am trying to capture something personal to me and universal to all of us.”

Sara Bennett

Sara Bennett, a 2024 Guggenheim fellow, is a former public defender who primarily photographs women with life sentences, both inside and outside prison, as a way to draw attention to the problems of mass incarceration. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries, including group shows at  Blanton Museum of Art’s Day Jobs; MoMA PS1’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration; the Museum of the City of New York’s New York Now: Home; and at solo shows including the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon; Photoville in Brooklyn, New York; and Rotterdam Photo 2023. Her work is in the collection of, among others, the John Hays Library at Brown University and the Museum of the City of New York, and has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker Photo Booth, and Variety and Rolling Stone’s “American (In)Justice”. She is the 2023 Emerging Laureate of the International Women in Photo Association.