Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Alex V. Cipolle

There is a countess over 100 years old who lives next to the Notre Dame in Paris. Local photographer Valérie Jardin took her photo last week.

“Pretty amazing,” Jardin says.

The portrait is a continuation of her project, “One Century,” a book of black and white photography featuring photos of 21 local and international centenarians. The book launches Nov. 16, along with a photo exhibition at the Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis.

Jardin is originally from Normandy, France, and has been living in Minnesota for decades. She shoots and teaches street photography in the Twin Cities and around the world. For the past year, Jardin has been meeting and taking photos of centenarians.

When she began the project, she didn’t know any. Through a friend she met Elaine Anderson, 102, of St. Louis Park.

“She was all dolled up. She had just had her hair done. She was so elegant and everything,” Jardin says.

Jardin, who does black and white digital photography only using natural light, took her portrait at her home.

“I thought to myself, well, that is just not what I want to do, because I’m all about everyday moments, unposed, untouched, totally candid,” Jardin says. She and Anderson got to talking; Anderson swims every day. The next day, Jardin met Anderson at the pool.

“That’s when the project really was born,” Jardin says. “It wasn’t about just photographing centenarians. It’s about photographing centenarians and the activity that brings them joy.”

Jardin reached out to her network to find more active centenarians.

“After photographing over 20 of them now, you have no idea how happy they are to be in the spotlight, and to have company and to share their stories with a complete stranger,” Jardin says. “After they celebrate their 100th birthday, usually they’re kind of forgotten. I really wanted to do something different. The response from the families was just amazing. They just cherished those photographs.”

Jardin met Gordon Kirk, 100, of St. Paul, who, according to the book, “was assigned to a trucking company under the command of Gen. George Patton. He landed at Omaha Beach six days after D-Day and remained in Europe for the duration of the war.”

There is Lois Widmark, 102, of Ivanhoe, who was a codebreaker in the Navy during World War II. Now she loves quilting, gardening, cuddling her cat Muggins and driving to church.

“She literally came running to open the door, and then she wanted to show me everything she could do,” Jardin says.

Jardin met Léone Formal, 104, of Normandy, France, this year at her first art exhibit. A survivor of the bombing of her hometown, Formal started painting in her 70s.

Reynolds Tomter, 107, of Pigeon Falls, Wis., served in the merchant marines during World War II. He loves reading the newspaper cover to cover, cooking and meeting new friends. In June, Tomter traveled to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. As did Lester Schrenk, 100, of Bloomington.

“It was absolutely wonderful,” Schrenk tells MPR News. “We visited the beaches, and we had a real nice tour of Paris.”

Schrenk had served in the Eighth Air Force and was captured as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down. After the war, Schrenk says he visited the crash site and tracked down the German pilot who shot his plane — and befriended him.

“A lot of German pilots, when you were shot down, would shoot you in your parachute,” Schrenk says. “If he would have just kept on shooting, I wouldn’t be here.”

Schrenk adds: “So, I think I owed him a thank you for saving my life.”

Schrenk says he’s outlived all of his family, including his wife and daughter. He never expected to live to 100.

“Well, I think I’m very lucky to live this long. What else can I say?” Schrenk says. “I’m very thankful that I’ve got so many friends. I’m very thankful that I’m very healthy and that I’m at least a little bit with it.”

Schrenk likes to woodwork, garden, do water aerobics and generally stay active. Jardin says he still takes stairs two at a time. She photographed him on his bike this summer; she could barely keep up.

“I’m running behind him and he’s making a bunch of loops around the parking lots and streets,” she says, laughing.

Jardin says most of the centenarians she’s met share a quality: positivity. She always asks them the same question.

“What’s the secret?” Jardin says. In addition to genetics, she says ”it’s really about staying active and staying socially connected.”

The project makes her think of her own parents, in their eighties, living in Normandy.

“I think it’s the heartwarming project we all need right now,” Jardin says. “Some of them are 20 years older than my parents, and so I’m thinking, ‘Wow, who knows?’”

Jardin encourages more centenarians and their loved ones to reach out. Schrenk turns 101 on Saturday. He says he will try to attend the book launch, but he might be too busy celebrating his birthday with friends. The photo exhibition runs through Jan. 4, 2025.