For photographer Kambua Chema, the lines on a woman’s face are not something to erase. They are evidence of laughter, grief, love, motherhood, survival, courage, growth and a life that has actually been lived.
That idea sits at the heart of I Have Earned Every Line™, Chema’s intimate portrait exhibition celebrating women 50 and older. The exhibition will close Sunday, Oct. 18, with a reception and artist talk at Alma Gallery, 3636 S. Iron Street in Chicago.
Beginning at 2 p.m., Chema will sit down with exhibition curator Susan Aurinko for a conversation about the women behind the portraits, the making of the project and the larger questions it raises about beauty, aging and what it means for women to remain visible as they grow older.
The exhibition, which opened Sept. 18, features women photographed without makeup, filters or beauty retouching. The choice was intentional. Rather than present aging as something that needs to be corrected, softened or concealed, Chema wanted to make photographs that embraced it.
“Every line carries a story,” Chema said. “The lines are both visible and internal as lived experiences. Experiences laced with joy, grief, laughter, survival, motherhood, love, courage and growth. I wanted to create portraits that say: you do not have to hide behind or mask any part of yourself to be beautiful. You have earned every line.”
The project grew out of Chema’s own experience with aging. After turning 50 in May 2025, the Chicago-based Kenyan-American photographer found herself thinking more deeply about the way women are viewed as they get older and how often they seem to disappear from conversations about beauty, desirability and representation.
Instead of accepting that invisibility, she turned her camera toward it.
Through I Have Earned Every Line, Chema asks viewers to reconsider a culture that often celebrates women for looking younger while treating the natural signs of aging as imperfections. Her portraits offer a different message: beauty does not expire.
There is strength in a face that has changed. There is history in it. There is individuality. And there is something powerful about seeing a woman as she is, rather than as society believes she should look.
For Chema, the project is also deeply connected to her own story. Her relationship with photography began decades before she could understand where it would eventually lead her. On her first birthday, her late father, Dr. Samson Chema, photographed her sitting on the hood of his car while holding his camera.
Fifty years later, that image has taken on new meaning.
“That photograph was taken before I could possibly understand what a camera was,” Chema said. “Fifty years later, photography has become the way I make sense of people, memory and being seen.”
Now 51, Chema has spent more than 25 years behind the camera. Through Kambua Chema Photography, she works in corporate headshots, personal branding and event photography while also serving as an educator and creative entrepreneur.
But I Have Earned Every Line is particularly personal. It allows her to use portraiture not simply to document how someone looks, but to explore how women see themselves and how the rest of us see them.
Aurinko, who curated the exhibition, brings decades of experience to that conversation. She has curated more than 230 exhibitions, including work through FLATFILEgalleries, which she founded and directed for nine years, as well as exhibitions for institutions and international government organizations. She also contributes to Newcity Magazine and Classic Chicago Magazine.
During the Oct. 18 closing conversation, Chema and Aurinko will discuss how the exhibition developed, the experiences of the women who participated and the responses the work has received from visitors. It will also be the public’s final opportunity to experience the exhibition at Alma Gallery.
At a time when women are still bombarded with messages about reversing age, covering gray hair, smoothing wrinkles and holding on to youth for as long as possible, Chema’s portraits offer something much simpler and perhaps more radical.
Look at the woman in front of you. See her. And understand that every line came from somewhere.
Closing Reception & Artist Talk
I Have Earned Every Line™
Photography by Kambua Chema
Curated by Susan Aurinko
Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026 | 2 p.m.
Alma Gallery
3636 S. Iron Street
Chicago, IL 60609
Gallery hours are Sundays from noon to 5 p.m., third Fridays from 5 to 9 p.m., and Monday through Friday by appointment.
