Snap Out of It: Photographs by Missy Kennedy Cleary

“Snap Out of It,” said Missy Kennedy Cleary as she photographed women – women over 40 who dared to suggest that they weren’t glamorous. “Come on girls,” she recalled   saying. “Look how beautiful you are.”

And, besides, she remembered, “Snap Out of It,” was a nifty and appropriate quote from the movie, “Moonstruck,” and it worked as a punning title for the photographs of the 25 Buffalo civic leaders she had created.

Kennedy Cleary has been making photographs professionally for more than 30 years, since college at Rochester Institute of Technology. She enjoyed a brief stint with the legendary   Bacharach Studio in New York (as their first female photographer), worked freelance for the Brandywine Valley Horse Show in Pennsylvania, and was drawn back to Buffalo where a portrait business – plus weddings and events –  commanded her presence. She took off about 10 years in the middle of this run, but Missy Kennedy Photography returned in 2008, and shortly after that the idea struck:

 “Every woman over 40 should have a fabulous photograph of herself,” she decided. And that notion grew to include women over 50, and over 60 and over 70. “They are fabulous, stunning, and glamorous. They radiate off the paper….Doctors, lawyers, civic volunteers, teachers….”

They are Therese Forton Barnes, Ermi Bonaccio, Dona Brown, Jennifer Burger, Lisa Davis, Cricket Gordon, Patty Glick, Elizabeth Gurney, Vikki Hamill, Jane Hettrick, Wendy Mathias, Kelly Ostendorf,  Lisa Pierce, Debbie Puffer, Beth Reich, Marcia Ritchie, Kate Roach, Wendy Schutte, Karen Serotte  Wendy Spier, Sandy Springer, Catherine Linder Spencer, Michele Trolli and Leslie Zemsky.