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‘Our Kind Of Women’ Bessie Akuba Winn & Terri J. Vaughn Redefine Black Womanhood After 40 With Moving Multi-Platform Project [Exclusive]
It’s called “Our Kind of Women,” a love letter defined as a multi-platform visual storytelling project documenting Black women over 40 in what Bessie calls their era of becoming. Through photography, audio reflections, and intentional questioning, the project captures women not as relics of legacy but as living, evolving history.
For Bessie, the timing was not accidental.
“Society Was Making Them Seem Invisible”
What was the catalyst?
“Well, it was several things,” Bessie said. “As I was approaching 40 about five years ago, I started seeing that Black women that I was witnessing evolve, my mentors, my peers, Black women that I’ve just been admiring from afar, I noticed that they were blooming and evolving in ways, but society was making them seem like they would be invisible.”
Instead of accepting that narrative, she decided to counter it with art.
“So I wanted to use art to capture them in a not a non performative way, but in the way that I could capture their essence, tell their stories, hold their stories, and document their evolution after 40.”
The project was three years in the making before cameras even lifted. Bessie began photographing women last January now she’s at over100.
Terri admitted she initially said yes out of instinct.
“Being a huge advocate for us, meaning Black women, and all of our essence, everything that we’re about… photographs of women 40 and over, celebrating who they are. That’s a yes for me.”
But the real understanding came during the shoot.
“I didn’t really understand the project until I actually went in for my session,” she said. “Once I experienced the shoot with Bessie and her intention behind it, her love of us, it was so matched how I feel.”
The experience is carefully curated but not staged. When women arrive, Bessie invites them to choose from handwritten questions that function more like journal prompts than interview cues.
“The question in itself is the most important thing, not the answer,” Bessie explained. “Because the answer will change. The question will linger with you.”
Terri described the vulnerability that followed.
“You open up, and you become super vulnerable,” she said. “I feel safe, and I get emotional and all the things. When we’re seen like that, and we’re acknowledged like that, and we’re honored and just really embraced like that, it lets us let all our guards down.”
Journalist Dawn Montgomery/ Source: Bessie Akuba / @ourkindofwomen / @Bessieakuba
After capturing authentic movement and expression, Bessie shifts to a posed image.
“Then we go on to doing a few posed images for their hero shot, which every woman needs.”
Every woman needs a hero shot.
Let that sit.
Redefining “Prime” and Unlearning Boxes
The cultural narrative that women peak early is one Bessie intentionally disrupts. In industries from entertainment to broadcast news, ageism remains a quiet barrier.
Source: Artist Joi Gilliam /Bessie Akuba / @ourkindofwomen / @Bessieakuba
Terri refuses to subscribe to it.
“I really wanted to unlearn all the things that I was taught,” she said. “There is no way to be a wife except for the way that you are a wife. There is no way to be a mother or a grandmother, except for the way it is for you.”
She cited women who modeled expansive living.
“When I think of somebody like Diana Ross… that’s not the typical image of a mother, but she was her kind of mother.”
That distinction matters. Her kind.
For Bessie, the idea of becoming has evolved alongside the project. After moving back to Atlanta, navigating divorce, and raising two children, becoming initially meant rebuilding. Now it means something broader.
“I have learned about 92 of those ways to become through every single woman that I’ve met,” she said. “Becoming is spiritual evolution. Becoming is community. Becoming is defining what sisterhood is.”
She paused.
“It has been a divine assignment.”
A Love Letter to Be Seen
When I asked what she hopes women walk away with, Bessie did not hesitate.
“That she’s seen,” she said. “That her life is not just a performance, and that she is seen by other women.”
Then she named it plainly.
“This is a love letter. This is an ode to Black womanhood.”
Terri’s answer was just as direct.
“I felt powerful. I felt like a bad a**. That’s what I want: every woman to watch and see all of this and experience like they are the s***”
She laughed, but she meant it.
“Can you imagine if we all walked around this earth knowing we are the s***? We’re not in competition. We’re not in… we are just amazing.”
In a climate where Black History and Women’s History is debated, minimized, or erased, “Our Kind of Women” stands as visual proof. Photos cannot be argued away. They cannot be rewritten.
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