Ruby Wallace-Ewing ’15 stood on the edge of a pond in a Maine backyard, peering through her camera. She was scared.
The water was deep and dark, and the way she had to teeter over the edge to get just the right shot made her feel like any moment she might fall in. But it’s what Natalie wanted. Natalie Walsh is a goddess, and this photoshoot was all about her.
Walsh is one of Wallace-Ewing’s calendar girls, along with 11 other women in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties from across the country, each filling a month as a part of her broader Goddess Project.
A work four years in the making that’s sent Wallace-Ewing, an established full-time photographer, criss-crossing the country to offer complimentary photo shoots in which she provides clothing and props that transform her older subjects into the goddesses they already are.
“When I started this work, I hadn’t ever thought about aging and what it meant,” admitted Wallace-Ewing. “I didn’t go into this with the goal of making any commentary on ageism. I went into it with the intention of building a business. It was only after other people explained what this work meant to them that I started to get it.”
More than a collection of photos, the Goddess Project is a celebration of age and the ways it has shaped and empowered the goddesses throughout their lives. Wallace-Ewing’s photoshoots offer women, a group particularly bombarded by American culture’s anti-aging obsession, a chance to be celebrated inside and out. In some cases, she’s literally placed a golden crown on their elegant heads.
The idea for the Goddess Project came organically for Wallace-Ewing, known as @photo.goddess to her millions of TikTok viewers.
What began as dressing her two sisters for photo shoots as a child evolved into a lifelong passion that took shape at Endicott. Here, Wallace-Ewing flourished personally and professionally while gaining the technical skills to boost her confidence.
“Endicott helped me in so many ways. I grew up in a small town in eastern Maine, and at that time, I really didn’t know what a photography career could look like beyond something like senior portraits,” she recalled. “Having the opportunity to do an internship at Boston Magazine, along with learning about the history of photography and the many different styles and genres that exist, really opened my eyes as a young person.”
Working with Professor Lawrence Volk was also formative.
“I had almost all of my classes with him, and I always felt very supported. He gave me a lot of confidence and made me feel like I was genuinely good at photography,” she said. “I wasn’t a naturally confident person, so having a professor who I felt was always in my corner meant a lot.”
As soon as she graduated, Wallace-Ewing hit the ground running as a freelance photographer, initially carving out a lucrative niche for herself as a wedding photographer. Even though she was succeeding financially, shooting events took a lot out of her physically and were starting to feel repetitive. She secretly felt trapped.
When the pandemic lockdowns brought her existing business to a sudden halt, she saw it as an opportunity to pivot and seek her next challenge in the field. She staged a goddess photoshoot with her grandmother, and the images went viral when she posted them online. Soon, Wallace-Ewing began fundraising online to provide free photoshoots for older women nominated by their loved ones, including the 12 calendar girls who made it into her coffee-table book.
“Now, I see that this work has resonated with so many people because there are a lot of emotions associated with aging, as it impacts everyone,” said Wallace-Ewing. “Depending on where you are in life, you may have just lost an aging loved one, or you’re scared of becoming one yourself.”
These women, like Natalie, who went on to become the cover girl for The Goddess Project’s coffee table book, are part of a movement of women who aren’t afraid to celebrate themselves, no matter their age.
Wallace-Ewing’s Goddess Project has now become a bookable experience that sustains her full-time. “The average age of my clients is probably in their forties and fifties, although I do work with people in their twenties and thirties and sixties as well,” she said.
Whether they are mothers, grandmothers, foster parents, social workers, physical therapists, journalists, athletes, or doctors, the women who seek out Wallace-Ewing’s work have often built their lives around service to their families and communities.
“These ladies have done stuff, okay!?” Wallace-Ewing said. “One of them even posed for Playboy back in the day.”
In November of 2025, Wallace-Ewing celebrated her initial goddesses and the project’s success with a gala in her town of Biddeford, Maine. Almost all of the 12 original goddesses attended, dressed to the nines, donning special sashes to identify them amongst the 100 guests, and snapping selfies beside their portraits, which Wallace-Ewing had blown up and mounted art gallery-style on the walls of the hair salon her friend loaned her for the occasion.
For Judy Carlson, who turned 70 last year, her daughter explained in her nomination letter that the shoot was just the adventure she wanted to give her mom for her birthday. It was a day that Judy will never forget.
One day in June, she got a call from Wallace-Ewing, inviting them to drive up the coast to meet in a field of fully blossoming purple lupines.
“The field was stunningly beautiful. I have never seen so many lupines in one place,” Carlson said. “Ruby had a trunk full of dresses, headpieces, and props. She has a gift of making you feel like you are a professional model, and she knows what poses will look good and is so adept at explaining how to achieve those poses.”
As Wallace-Ewing considers her own world of choices moving forward, she’s committed to what she once thought was merely a side hustle and creative outlet.
“I don’t work for an aid group. I’m not a doctor. But I do feel like this is important work. It has given me a lot of purpose because it inspires and brings a lot of joy to people during a time in life that we sometimes worry can be joyless,” she explained.
And though some of the goddesses are experiencing memory issues and other health challenges, their energy and the feeling at these shoots are pure joy.
Case in point, September’s goddess, Joan Peabody, introduced herself as being “93 years young.” Wallace-Ewing photographed her in Washington state at dusk.
“We drove up to the top of Mt. Rainer for this one,” said Wallace-Ewing. “We literally stood on top of a volcano.”
Although her granddaughter described her as “fiery,” Peabody initially wouldn’t even make eye contact.
“She looked worried that she was meeting some murderer on top of a mountain,” recalled Wallace-Ewing, “but within 10 minutes, she opened up. She’d brought a wig and got into it and was posing so hard, laughing all the while.”
“I’m the queen of the world,” Peabody shouted into the wind at the end, grinning.