A peek inside the making of the 50 Over 50—and how one artistic lister helped make possible the visuals for the 2022 edition.
Written by Robyn Selman
As Forbes’ director of photography, each year I scan the upcoming editorial calendar looking for my favorites—those that require images in a series rather than single photos. Series allow us the opportunity to dig into a topic, create a visual essay and collectively wrap around an idea.
The 50 Over 50 project is one of my most beloved series, partly because it’s my tribe. With the 2021 inaugural list, we presented women immersed in florals. Flowers represent perseverance, striving and strength; they are the driving force of nature—and women are the driving force of pretty much everything.
With four new portraits to lead the 2022 list, we decided to stick with florals as our theme, but instead of the live flowers, branches and stems we used last year, we commissioned four large, gloriously painted backdrops. And that’s where our Over 50 lister, Sarah Oliphant, 71, founder of Sarah Oliphant Backdrops, fit in.
Behind every studio photographer are myriad unknown people who help bring her or his vision to life. Like backup singers, their talent makes the final piece truly great; without them, entire tracks would be missing. Oliphant backdrops have been the backup singers to the best in the photo industry for decades. Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel and Patrick Demarchelier are just a few of the rock stars that Sarah has worked with.
Sarah is happy to stay in the background. “We are the magician’s assistant,” she says. People think it’s sad to be the backup person, but for me, it’s the painting that’s pleasurable. The backup person has freedom. I might make less money, but I have freedom, and I have joy.”
So, like Darlene Love, who supported singers from Elvis to Springsteen, or Merry Clayton, who shook the Stones awake on Gimme Shelter, Oliphant is the backup singer’s singer. She creates her backdrops on burlap, muslin, wood and countless other media. She understands her medium with the eye of a dressmaker; the way cloth will take light, the mood it will throw.
Sarah has a B.A. in painting and went to graduate school for theater. She credits working in the theater with learning how to be collaborative. A friend recommended her to the photographer Michel Tcherevkoff, a commercial photographer who once created a dress from toothbrushes. In the pre-photoshop days, model makers and set makers were needed to create worlds of elements for photographers. Sarah got her start then, when Tcherevkoff asked her to paint some skies.
Her work became a business when an art director suggested she rent her drops and get multiple uses out of a single effort. In 1978, she began to collect an inventory of backdrops for rent. Today, her factory in Brooklyn houses about 3,000 backdrops, from Irving Penn-inspired organic pieces to meticulous recreations of cityscapes or nature.
Oliphant can take drops that are 20 or 30 years old and refresh them. Drops from the 1980s or 1990s get new layers of paint to bring them up to date. They’re like trees. “They’ll be here long after I’m gone.”
Sarah tells Forbes that she felt tremendous freedom after turning 50. “All the pressures and expectations that weigh on young women were gone for me. Once I turned 50, I could just concentrate on going to work every day and being a nice person.”
Sarah also told Forbes that painting these flowers was the most fun she has had making backdrops in a long time. That’s why I look forward to this assignment every year. These images were not just made better by Sarah’s work. They were made possible on account of them. It’s safe to say that every woman on this year’s Over 50 list has her own list of backup singers they’d like to shout out to. Sarah Oliphant is mine.
50 OVER 50 FEATURES
