Gisela Getty on Aging, Self-Portraits, and Her New Project for Mendoza Art Foundation

Gisela Getty, a former art student who protested against Documenta and became a face of the 1968 movement, is developing a new project titled "Age Is a Strange Country" for the Mendoza Art Foundation in Naples. The work, which will later be presented at Berlin Art Week 2027, consists of self-portraits exploring the experience of aging. Getty, who photographed her previous exhibition "Ashes to Rishikesh" entirely with an iPhone, describes aging as feeling like new territory because one continues to feel young inside while the body visibly ages. She notes that her last exhibition dealt with the death of her twin sister Jutta Winkelmann, who died at 67. Getty photographed Winkelmann's dying process, a period of about three months during which Winkelmann went from intense fear to a state of fearlessness, often speaking of experiences outside normal time. Getty studied art in Kassel with her sister, where they organized an anti-Documenta action, producing small books juxtaposing art images with concentration camp photographs. They later abandoned art and political work, moved to Rome, and became involved with Rainer Langhans. Getty has always photographed, and she lost two thick books of negatives from her time in Rome in a taxi, which she considers her main body of work. She now works both analog and digital, and is also collaborating with her nephew on a film about her sister's death.