This is Who I am by Rosanne Olson
They are bodies that have been shaped, misshaped, reshaped by the full sweep of the feminine experience: pregnancy, childbirth, weight gain and loss, illness and health, and age. They belong to 54 women ages 19 to 95, of all sizes and shapes, ethnicities and life experiences, who were willing to expose their naked physical forms in This is Who I Am. They are ordinary women only in the sense that none is a professional model. They are in all other ways extraordinary - courageous, curious, thoughtful, speaking unflinchingly about their bodies, then allowing themselves to be photographed to prove their own worth, to inspire other women, to make peace with their physical selves, to glorify the real beauty of all women.Certainly, the feminine nude form is not new to artists and photographers. But the portraits in This is Who I Am taken by award-winning photographer Rosanne Olson, with a steady, unjudgmental eye, speak loudly to the common obsession of feminine perfection slim hips and full breasts, high cheekbones and tiny waists, taut skin and eternal youth - and even more loudly to the way real women, with real bodies and real lives, look. This is Who I Am will teach women to see themselves with kindness, compassion, maybe love, and certainly acceptance. It encourages all women to find grace and beauty in their own lives.