‘I hope people see the real me…the excitement I have at my age, on the cusp of 60’
What happens when women stop looking at themselves through the lens of everything they think they should change – and start seeing themselves as they are?
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That is the question Fredericton photographer Nicole Boudreau set out to explore with 40 Over 40: Volume I, an exhibition featuring portraits and personal reflections from 21 women, primarily from communities across New Brunswick.
“I hope that they came away feeling beautiful and empowered,” Boudreau said. “And just with a renewed sense of confidence. And that they can do anything.”
That idea is at the heart of Boudreau’s work, with the final portraits and personal reflections presented Sept. 23 during a one-night event at Boudreau’s downtown Fredericton studio for the participants and their invited guests.
While not an ongoing public exhibition, the private evening marked the first volume of the project Boudreau intends to continue for years.
“It’s always, from the get-go, been intended in my mind to be an ongoing multi-year project,” Boudreau said, adding she has already photographed several women for Volume II and is booking additional participants, with the next presentation planned for March 2027 to coincide with International Women’s Day.
The goal, she said, is to challenge outdated notions of what it means to be over 40 – and to help women see themselves, and be seen, differently.
It is about confidence, identity, resilience and the lives women have built and giving them an opportunity to see themselves through someone else’s eyes.
For 59-year-old Jennifer Gardner, that meant seeing sides of herself she recognized immediately – and others she hadn’t necessarily seen in quite the same way before.
There was her fun side. Her glamorous side. Her powerhouse side. Her feisty side. Her “business babe” side.
“She was able to capture the essence of who I am,” Gardner said. “I loved it!”
Gardner has plenty of life experience to draw on.
She spent 29 years as a nurse, first in a hospital setting and later teaching nursing at college. She retired from that career at 50 and took a completely different path, becoming an entrepreneur, realtor and certified staging specialist and she is now also writing a book.
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Her passion, she said, is empowering women to become their best selves.
She wanted the photographs to capture who she is at this particular point in her life – on the cusp of 60 and excited about what comes next.
“I hope people see the real me,” Gardner said. “The passion I feel for life. The excitement I have at my age, on the cusp of 60.”
She also sees the photographs as a record of a moment that cannot be recreated.
“I felt it would be a chance of a lifetime that I wouldn’t want to miss out on,” she said. “And the pictures will capture me at a time in my life where I will never be again … it’s a gift of reflection.”
That idea – that a portrait can become a way of seeing and preserving a version of yourself that might otherwise be lost – is central to Boudreau’s project.
For Melody Russell, 51, the experience meant seeing beauty in places she had spent years learning to criticize.
Russell had always been self-conscious about the space between her teeth. People had made fun of it and, at one point, she had considered having it filled.
Then she sat in front of Boudreau’s camera.
“She’s like, ‘I really love that space between your teeth,’” Russell recalled. “And I’m like, people used to make fun of that all the time, and I almost got it filled.”
It was a small moment, but it captured something much bigger about the project.
Russell had also been conscious of her arms, legs and hips. When she saw the finished photographs, she found herself noticing those features differently.
“I had this moment where I was like, ‘Wow, my legs actually look kind of nice,’” she said.
For Boudreau, that reaction is exactly what she hoped 40 Over 40 would create.
The idea grew partly from her own experience. After spending years as a French professor and university administrator in the United States, Boudreau moved back to New Brunswick and eventually left a job that gave her little room for creativity or control.
Photography became her second act.
During her own branding photo session in her late 40s, Boudreau had an experience that stayed with her, one of the photographs now hangs prominently in her studio.
She said she looks at that photograph and, unusually, doesn’t see the flaws she might normally pick apart.
“All I see is my beauty,” she said.
On difficult days, the photograph serves as a reminder that she is worthy and that things will be OK and she says she wanted other women to have that same experience.
As part of the project Boudreau says the women in Volume I were asked to reflect on their lives – the challenges they had faced, what they had learned, what they were proud of, how they see themselves now and what they would tell their younger selves.
Across the responses, Boudreau noticed recurring themes of resilience, confidence, reinvention, family, career, loss, achievement and the freedom that can come with getting older.
One message came up repeatedly when women considered what they would tell their younger selves: trust yourself sooner.
Boudreau said that kind of confidence often comes with experience.
“We seem to all agree that aging’s a privilege,” she said.
Shannon Merrifield, 53, understands the complicated relationship many women have with being photographed.
The CEO of the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce spends plenty of time in the public eye but generally doesn’t like pictures of herself.
She approached Boudreau’s session with some dread, but by the end, she was having fun.
“There are parts of our beauty that we kind of lose touch with as we get a little bit older,” Merrifield said.
She said Boudreau’s ability to make women comfortable allowed her to reconnect with those parts of herself.
Merrifield hopes people looking at her portrait see her “true authentic self” – strong, vibrant and creative.
Her advice to women who are hesitant to have their own portrait taken? “Just go for it.”
Gardner would say the same.
She describes the experience as empowering, filled with laughter and a sense of being celebrated.
From the moment women arrive, she said, they are pampered and prepared – their hair and makeup done, clothes and accessories organized, and then they step in front of the lights and camera.
But what stays with Gardner is what happens after the photographs are taken.
“Seeing the images was like seeing another part of me – someone I knew well but also didn’t recognize,” she said.
For Boudreau, that may be the most important part of the project.
She knows women often arrive at the studio worried about how they will look or whether they are photogenic.
She watches their shoulders and hands tighten. Then she finds an image she loves and turns the camera around.
“They light up,” she said.
And for a moment, perhaps, they see what Boudreau sees – not the years they wish they could take back. Not the features they have been taught to hide. Just themselves.
And maybe, for the first time in a while, they like what they see.
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