Getting old is no joke. It just sometimes looks funny, says Roger Rosenblatt, who recently turned 83. Take, for example, getting out of a taxi: “What you don’t want to do is get your left foot caught under the front right seat before you try to swing your right foot toward the door; otherwise, you’ll topple over while attempting to pay the fare, possibly injuring your ankle, and causing the maneuver to go even more slowly. If you make it past the taxi door, there is still the one-foot jump to the street. You’re old. You could fall. Happens all the time.” Twenty-five years ago, Roger wrote a book called “Rules for Aging.” The first rule? “No one is thinking about you,” he says. When you get old, “you disappear from the culture, or rather, it disappears from you,” Roger observes. “You are Rip Van Winkle without having fallen asleep.” #aginggracefully #gettingold #nytopinion

“When I was a kid, we used to make paper hats and be pirates. It’s silly. It’s wonderful. It’s childish. It takes away any possibility of my being pompous,” says Duane Michals, a 91-year-old photographer known for his surrealist series and portraits. @nytopinion asked 13 renowned photographers to show us the people, places and times that make them feel seen. They turned the camera on themselves, their loved ones, a pet rabbit. It’s a different lens on growing old. “My whole life has been fireworks,” says Duane. “And now that I’m old, I’m having my grand finale.” Check out Duane’s and the other photographers’ work at the link in our bio. #aginggracefully #youngatheart #photography #nytopinion