“Photography is my life,” says PPA Life Member Florence Bendell.

And a long life it’s been. Bendell, a prolific wedding and portrait photographer from Long Island, is 100 years old. Just two years ago, she did a portrait session for a family in Atlanta. “It was stunning,” she says proudly.

Bendell’s first camera in the 1950s and 1960s was her husband Mike’s Graflex Speed Graphic with sheet film, which she used to photograph children in various summer camps in New York’s Hudson Valley. She intuitively learned how to pose portraits using window light. At a bungalow colony where she spent summers with Mike and their young daughters, Bendell met a couple of Hungarian immigrant photographers who taught her how to color black-and-white photographs with oils. “I became very good. … People swear they have paintings,” Bendell recalls, adding that she started selling the painted wall art.

In the early 1960s, a photographer she met in Long Island invited her to a meeting of a local guild affiliated with PPA. She started attending workshops and entered monthly photographic competitions, where she frequently won in portrait categories. “I’m very persevering. I was very competitive,” Bendell recalls. “PPA taught me so much. We had a lot of lecturers, and they were very good in their field.”

In 1971, she opened her first studio in Long Island and moved to a larger space in 1979. A year later, she lost almost everything in a catastrophic fire. True to her determined nature, Bendell opened a third studio in 1981 and continued her wedding and portrait business there until health concerns forced her to close in 1993. She kept working as Portraits by Florence even when she moved to Atlanta eight years ago to be closer to her daughter and daughter’s family. She still uses her same photo lab (Labgrafix in Lynbrook, New York), and still takes pictures because she loves capturing the beauty of humans. “I can’t stop [photographing], and I never will,” she adds. Asked to sum up her photography journey in one word, she answers, “Fulfilling.”

In 2003, Bendell became a PPA Life Member, a designation available to those who have been active members for at least 10 consecutive years and have accumulated a total of 95 qualifying years (awarded for each year of membership plus the age of the member). Life Members have all the rights, privileges, benefits, and services as PPA full members at no cost, as well as complimentary Imaging USA registration. Members who want to maintain their CPP status still pay the fee and must comply with certification requirements. Wedding or portrait photographers can add $25/year to continue the indemnification trust benefit. If you qualify for Life Membership, fill out the simple application and sign that you understand the parameters. Life Member candidates are voted on by the board. 

A Life Member like Bendell is full of wisdom and zeal for the industry, which she shares freely. “Every picture you pose, that picture has to talk to you. It has to say something. It has to reach your heart. If you sit stagnant … it says nothing to me. So, every portrait has to have some kind of movement,” she says. “Most important is that you capture a mood. You reach for their soul. You don’t just take what you see.”  

Melanie Lasoff Levs is director of publications.