Aimee McCrory
Aimee McCrory
Roller Coaster. Scenes from a Marriage
Half-cloth hardcover
30 x 22 cm
152 pages
2023
Kehrer Verlag
About the Book:
RollerCoaster. Scenes from a Marriage expresses a variety of moments most long-term relationships face with intended honesty, intimacy, and humor. In western culture, growing old is often accompanied by feelings of shame. Terms such as »losing your wits,« »becoming irrelevant« and »being abandoned« haunt older individuals.
Aimee McCrory’s goal as a photographer is to raise awareness regarding the joys and the challenges of growing old together. Drawing upon her background in theater, she created the series as a »pseudo-documentary« version of the relationship with her husband of forty-two years, Don. McCrory manipulates their personal domestic circumstances just enough to heighten elements of mystery. The viewer’s array of responses may say more about their domestic relationships than about what can be seen in the actual photographs.
From the text Tight Turns, Steep Slopes, and Inversions by Chehalis Deane Hegner:
The pulse of McCrory’s Rollercoaster courses through a multichambered heart. When I look at the photographs gathered here, there are a few striking elements that I want to draw attention to. Aimee has a strategic and physical process of working. She deals with contemporary cultural taboos around sex and older adults, highlighting our impermanence and the consequence of aging, sickness, and death. Finally, Aimee explores self-portraiture and flow state (or being in the zone) as pathways to selfrealization.
With Aimee and Don now in their seventies, the enterprise is a meditation on birth, aging, sickness, and death. Despite taking great care of their health, there is no possibility for the couple to shift the human vehicle into reverse gear. This is unabashedly evidenced in images of McCrory’s unconcealed exposition of aging flesh and bones. Structural changes in deteriorating joints, muscles, and tendons foretell the possibility of conditions such as osteoporosis and arthritis which, were they to come to pass, would thereby limit their prehensile grasp on life and the things and people they love.
While I reflect on McCrory’s work, I also experience its urgency from the inside out. Each of us will eventually lose everything and everyone we hold dear. While fighting hard to hold onto life, love, sexuality, and physical bodies, the more meditative aspects of the narrative ask us if we are yet emotionally and spiritually evolved enough to let go and be at peace with our impermanence.
Image by Aimee McCrory
Book review by Dana Stirling |
Aimee McCrory’s monograph, Roller Coaster Scenes from a Marriage, is a moving and playful exploration of love lived over many years. made in collaboration with her husband, the work follows a partnership of many years—its tenderness, its ups and downs, its humor, and its inevitable vulnerability. What emerges is not just a portrait of two people, but a visual survey on intimacy itself, staged with honesty and theatrical flair.
The project began taking shape during the pandemic, when we were suddenly shut inside together in a way we had never been before. The act of staying home—something once ordinary—turned into both a comfort and a test. McCrory embraced this enforced stillness as an opportunity to reflect on events of daily life: a look, a gesture, a shared joke, or the silence of a routine task. Through carefully made photographs, she turns the domestic into the cinematic, blurring the line between documentation and performance. Each image reads like a still from a film—part truth, part fiction, all anchored in lived experience. This created a feeling with the viewer of voyeurism on one hand, but on the other hand it almost feels like we are looking at actors so it's “okay” to look- right?
Image by Aimee McCrory
What makes the work so compelling is its willingness to approach subjects often ignored. Desire, aging and the shifting roles within a marriage that are usually unspoken, tucked away behind clichés or stereotypes. She places these notions up front, approaching them with humor and honesty. Her photographs remind us that intimacy does not fade with time; it changes, shifts, and at times, surprises. The laughter of long-term companionship, the friction of daily routines, and the quiet gestures of care are all given equal weight. I think in many ways this books allows us to look at aging in a new way, a fresh perspective that we all will face in our own way- it gives a lot of comfort in many ways and allows us to view almost into a future we might live ourselves very soon - there is a charming comfort to it.
McCrory images sit somewhere between performance and documentary. The settings, gestures, and small details are heightened to catch our attention, yet they remain rooted in the familiar domestic life most of us know and live. This tension between artificial and candid makes the work resonate on multiple levels—it feels both deeply personal and surprisingly universal. As she and her husband step into these roles, the photographs become a mirror, inviting us to consider the humor, intimacy, and complexity within our own relationships.
Some photographs are lighthearted, others carry a sadness to them. Together, they form a rhythm—ups and downs—echoing the metaphor of the roller coaster. The sequencing of images emphasizes this motion, carrying the viewer through moments of laughter, tenderness, and even mundane moments. It is a portrait of marriage and all of what it might mean to be a part of one.
The book itself reinforces this experience. Published by Kehrer Verlag, it is thoughtfully designed and beautifully produced. From the lavish book cover that feels tactile and intentional, to the photographs that are given their space on the page, allowing the viewer to really see and linger on them. The tactile qualities of the book and the clean layout all contribute to a reading experience that feels intimate—like being welcomed into someone’s private world.
Image by Aimee McCrory
Image by Aimee McCrory
The choice to work in black and white adds another layer to the project. By stripping away color black and white becomes less about nostalgia and more about clarity. It distills the scenes to their essence, allowing the viewer to move past distraction and focus on the emotional truth at the heart of each photograph. There is also a homage almost to old movies that portray these types of relationships and their ideal settings of the past - this look of black and white almost mimics these shows and allows us to dive into a story or two people who might not be perfect but are perfectly who they are.
Roller Coaster Scenes from a Marriage is ultimately a celebration of love. McCrory and her husband use photography to share their everyday, to examine the passage of time, and to remind us of the value of companionship. It is a book that feels tender and brave —an invitation to consider our own relationships, and the ways in which love changes and shifts over time and age in the most beautiful way.
