Studio Photography | Ilan Wittenberg Photographer

Mark and his Saxophone

My name is Mark and as you can see from the picture, a somewhat dilapidated antipodean – 66 years old. In earlier, more healthy times, I remember feeling joyous and grateful to be growing up in a large family of seven, in New Zealand’s ‘Big Smoke’ – Auckland city. We all inherited a love for music, singing in harmony and some of us playing instruments. I myself completed a Bachelor of Music in Performance, on the bassoon and at 19 years old managed to score a prestigious position in the NZSO, down in Wellington.

Being a classical musician was the easy part – knowing myself was harder. After a series of fickle affairs and liaisons – some live-in – and the loss of loved ones – I ended up losing the plot and was incarcerated in Hell – an acute psychiatric ward. Nine weeks seemed like an eternity but coming out as gay helped me secure a release which is ironic, considering homosexual acts were only declassified as evidence of mental disorders, in 1973. I headed north, back to the big smoke.

In Auckland, now my playground, I found myself in and out of work, playing music, answering phones, washing dishes, waitering – meeting secret lovers, locals or travellers from the White House to the Queen’s ship Britannia. I became a bit of a gay activist, protesting for the sake of my gay brothers and sisters to get the Homosexual Law Reform bill passed. Despite the Salvation Army mounting a petition against us, which was signed by a quarter of the country’s three million people, to keep homosexuality a crime, the bill passed in 1986. I learnt then that the majority is not always right.

Returning to music, I taught myself, and others, how to play the saxophone, piano, flute and bassoon. I taught at Kings College and privately. I gigged at a few weddings, parties and even for a Lord from England. How I ‘Forest Gumped’ my way onto the Royal Society Payroll I will never know! Unfortunately, God had other challenges for me and after getting my students through their exams, I entered the new millennium with a heart attack, compounded with an HIV diagnosis. I was going to die.

I am still waiting to open the portal to the next life, as we all are. Thank you science – thank you, God. I feel more focussed now. The brilliant photographer, Ilan Wittenberg, saw me playing in the dunes of Long Bay (saxophone!) and so here I am, immortalised on these pages. I have had serious bodily challenges lately and live in the CBD where Otara meets the city, in some kind of Maori haven for the crooks of their culture- Grey’s Ave. Daily I am called Poofta and Faggot in this proletarian abyss. Sometimes I can hardly even walk, yet doggedly I sing waiata * in the local Street Choir, run by the dynamic Rohan McMahon.

So it seems I have come full circle and I am negotiating the ghetto of ostracism again, surrounded by the nasty and nice. As Bette Davis said ‘Old age ain’t no place for sissies’. Wish me luck – I am going to need it!

*In Māori culture, waiata refers to songs, chants, or the act of singing. Deeply woven into Aotearoa’s heritage, they serve as powerful expressions of history, emotion, and identity

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Paul Ryan

Black and White Portrait of a man in a studio

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Myk

Man posing for his studio Portrait

Man and his Saxophone

Man with Saxophone

Nate

My name is Nate, and I’m 27 years old. About eight or nine months ago, I found out that my girlfriend of eight and a half years had cheated on me. We were high school sweethearts — we met when we were just 16. What drew me to her was her smile, the way she looked […]

Craig Smyth

Craig Smyth

“My name is Craig. I’m a 60-year-old Kiwi who spent most of my life in construction. Two years ago, everything changed when I had an accident. While carrying a heavy steel prop with two workmates, they lost their grip. The full 150 kg weight crashed down on my shoulder, leaving me seriously injured. I’ve been on a long road since — surgeries, recovery, and living on ACC [Accident Compensation Corporation]; but also a journey of transformation.

That accident forced me to face my health head-on. At the time, I weighed over 110 kilos, felt constantly tired, and was deeply unhappy. My doctor warned me that if I didn’t change my lifestyle, I was heading for a stroke or heart attack within two years! That hit me hard. I knew it was now or never.

I committed to a complete reset — cleaner eating, daily exercise, and accountability. I switched to a high-protein, low-carb carnivore-style diet, cutting out processed foods and sugar. This is an extremely restrictive, high-fat diet consisting entirely of meat, fish, and animal products: chicken, beef, ham, eggs, sausages etc., eliminating all sugars, fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and seeds. It wasn’t easy, but it worked. Bit by bit, the weight came off. The energy came back. The spark returned. This has improved my mental clarity and reduced inflammation with risks of nutrient deficiencies and high cholesterol levels.

Today, I weigh 77 kilos — that’s over 30 kilos lost. My doctor says my body is balanced, my heart is healthy, and I’m within my ideal range. But the real victory is how I feel: strong, focused, and alive again.

Now, I’m channeling that new strength into something bigger than myself. Starting March 1st, I’ll be walking 12 hours a day for seven days around Cornwall Park: a massive journey to raise awareness and donations for Starship public children’s hospital, helping children who are battling illness in Auckland and across New Zealand.

This journey is about more than fitness; it’s about purpose. I was given a second chance at life, and I want to pay it forward.”

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Toya

“My name is Toya. I was born and raised in Hamilton, in the Waikato, on a farm with my mum and dad.

This story is really about my late mother, Julie , and how she shaped who I am today.

Mum grew up on a farm in Harwera. She was really close to her dad and spent most of her childhood and teenage years around him. Sadly, motor neurone disease runs in our family. It took my mum, her dad, her brother, and her sister. Mum battled it for nearly three years, and it was incredibly hard to watch. She had always been such a strong, independent woman, but slowly she became reliant on everyone for everything.

Growing up, Mum was feisty. She didn’t take any nonsense from anyone. She always spoke her mind, said exactly what she felt, and stuck firmly to her opinions. She was stubborn; once she decided something, good luck changing her mind.

She looked after us the way any mother does, but she was like a super mum. Nothing fazed her.

She was a bit of a rebel in her younger days. Mum got expelled in third form for punching the principal; she was a wild child. But she was strong. She made her own way through life, doing whatever she needed to do to get where she wanted to be.

She had my sister when she was about 19 and raised her as a single mum. Then she met my dad when my sister was around four, and he stepped in and raised her as his own.

The qualities I got from her are clear: my strength, my grit, my natural stubbornness. I get that fighting spirit and that nurturing side straight from Mum.

Being pregnant now has been tough, especially not having her here to share it with. But at the same time, I feel like this is my chance to show her, through how I live and how I’ll raise my child, that she taught me well. She prepared me for this.”

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Jay

Portrait Photography North Shore

My name is Jay. I’m 47 years old and work as a project manager.

Looking back, my younger years were filled with rebellion and anger—anger at the world, at life, at basically everyone around me. As a teenager and into my early twenties, that anger surfaced in all the wrong ways: heavy drinking, bad habits, car accidents, fights in clubs, and turning every situation into a mess. I was just being destructive.

Then something clicked. The penny dropped, and I realized there had to be more to life than staying stuck in rebellion and negativity. I decided to channel that anger into something constructive.

I started going to the gym, got physically fit, and poured energy into my studies and work. I focused on becoming more positive. During this transformation, my faith grew stronger too. I discovered a real love for physical activity. The gym became my therapy—far better than any pill or counselor could be. It helped me process and redirect that old anger in a healthy way, and that shift carried me into adulthood.

Along the way, I met my girlfriend, who is now my wife. We fell in love, I found a true sense of completeness with her, we got married, and we built a family together with our kids. That’s where I am today.

Life settled into a good rhythm: physical fitness, meaningful work, a loving family, and a growing faith all came together. I started genuinely enjoying life instead of fighting against it.

That angry, rebellious kid is long gone. Now I’m grateful for the journey and the man I’ve become.

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Tatiane

Portrait Photographer Auckland

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Jenelle

Studio Photography Auckland

Jenelle

“To My Husband,

There was a time when I could have opened this document and filled the pages with anger, sadness, and disappointment 1000 times over. There are so many examples of how your drinking has impacted our lives. But surprisingly, to me, I am struggling to find the emotion that should be behind them. I feel empty and detached, having untangled myself from a relationship that was hijacked by alcohol and robbed of all of those foundations that have to be present for two people to thrive: trust, honesty, presence. You never noticed the untangling was happening because you were never sober.

The thing we always had was love. I never doubted how much you loved me. In turn, I think it took you some time to truly believe that I loved you, that you were worth loving, that I was your best friend, your number one supporter, and that you were loved and adored and respected by our kids. But it wasn’t enough.

Why wasn’t it enough?

It should have been enough!

Every time you poured a drink, I felt that you were choosing it over me, over us. I am not an addict and I don’t pretend to understand the overwhelming desire you would wake up with every morning to find a drink. But it’s hard to separate my head and heart, and every day that you drank, I felt betrayed that you didn’t fight hard, or at all, that you didn’t fight for us or, even worse, you didn’t fight for you!

I have literally lost count of the number of times I tried to get you help, to go to meetings, to get a sponsor, to talk to a counselor, to go to CADDS, to go to the Dr. But you always managed to convince yourself that you had it under control, that you were different from those others at AA, that you didn’t need help, that you didn’t have a problem, that you were “an island”. For such a smart man, I often wondered how you could be so bloody stupid.

The thing about living with an alcoholic is that when a disaster occurs, you think ‘well perhaps that’s it, perhaps that’s the worst that can happen’. Except it’s not; there is always more to come.

I have used weeks of my own sick leave to stay at home and detox you when all the services turned us away. I’ve fed you soft foods like a baby, showered you, dressed you, put you to bed, held you for hours on end, tended to your wounds when you have fallen and ripped open your head or fallen asleep against the heater. I have refused invitations from our friends for years to the point that we stopped being invited anywhere. I have made up more excuses than I can remember to protect you. I always wondered when people asked how I was, were they really asking about me, or asking about you? I have stopped you killing yourself from carbon monoxide poisoning in our garage whilst our kids were home. I have kept all the car keys hidden for months at a time. I have found you in my emergency room, full of the people I have worked 30 years with, fully clothed and standing in a pool of urine, listened to the story of how you fell through a ranch slider window slicing open your face. I’ve had to ring your boss (a man who has bent over backwards to help and support you) to say his work vehicle has been impounded as you have been caught DIC. I have been woken after nightshift from the sound of you crashing into and wrecking our letterbox, again drunk and again in a brand new company car. I have had to receive the phone call of how you have been drinking at work and have now lost your job. I have had to ask my family to help pay our mortgage. I have had to tell our kids that we have to sell our house, the house they grew up in because I cannot pay all the bills alone. I have had to pack up our house and move into my mother’s house, who is 93 with dementia, with our 19-year-old daughter and two cats and two dogs. I have spent hours searching for your latest hiding place for gin bottles. I have poured thousands of dollars of alcohol down the drain. I have worked hundreds of hours of overtime to support your habit indirectly. I have listened to the vile names you have called me, the accusations that I was having affairs. I have taken calls from our kids saying they were frightened of your behavior. I have been hospitalized with stress-induced gastritis with pain so bad I needed a morphine infusion. I have had to message your mother saying how I feared for your life. I have come home after days sitting with my dying father to find you drunk and incoherent, not able to offer me any level of support. I have had to have you committed to the mental health unit. I have used the people around me as a constant support, my family, our friends, my work colleagues – sharing the latest saga but usually finishing the conversation with my hope that perhaps this time will be different. But it never was. And it never will be for me and you because I choose not to have alcohol impact my life and the life of my children anymore! I am not going to spend any more of my life waiting for the next disaster.

You have to know how much it kills me to say that. I married you, for better or worse, in sickness and in health. I married you, you had me, I was all in, all yours. Because we had something that not everyone finds. We had that connection, that fabulous ability to look at each other and know each other’s thoughts, we had the laughter, we had the tenderness, but I could see your high level of daily distress, that there was something bad and powerful and underlying that was fundamental in how you lived your life, but you could never share that with me so I could never help and for that I am sorry. And now each of us is alone, and it’s such a fucking waste, and I hate that this is where we have ended up.”

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Patrick

“Meet my incredible husband, Patrick Woodcock—a true warrior who rises every day with courage that deserves all the high-fives! His journey hasn’t been easy, marked by deep loss and battles that would test anyone’s strength. The “Sacred” heart tattoo on his chest honors his teenage girlfriend, lost to suicide—a heartbreak that sent him spiraling into a 15-year struggle with cannabis addiction. Then came the devastating loss of his father to bowel cancer, pushing him deeper into a darker world of methamphetamine.

When we met, Patrick was still caught in that storm. But love has a way of lighting the path. A few years into our relationship, I gave him a choice: a life with me or the life he was living. He chose us—quitting drugs cold turkey, a feat of sheer willpower. Alcohol crept in as a new challenge, but when faced with another ultimatum, Patrick tackled it with the same fierce determination. Today, he’s proudly two years sober!

But life threw another curveball. A brutal road rage incident left him with a severe head injury after being run over by a ute [Kiwi for pickup truck]. Violent seizures followed, so intense that doctors had to place him in a 36-hour coma to protect his brain. Coming out of it, Patrick had to relearn the basics—putting on clothes, even remembering my name. For someone so brilliant and quick-witted, losing that spark was crushing. Yet, he’s never stopped fighting.

With unwavering grit and my support, Patrick’s been rebuilding himself, piece by piece. He’s now about 70% of the man he once was—and he’s still climbing. Now, as we look forward to welcoming our first child, I’m in awe of his resilience. Patrick doesn’t just survive; he thrives. Here’s to a man who proves every day that no matter how hard life hits, you can rise again.”
(c) Ilan Wittenberg

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Andrew John Williams

Kia ora! I’m Andrew John Williams, a proud 56-year-old with Māori and Scottish roots, hailing from the Ngāpuhi iwi through my father’s side, the first missionaries in Russell, Bay of Islands. My life’s been quite the journey! At just three weeks old, I faced a life-threatening condition with no oxygen reaching my brain. Back then, heart surgeries were no small feat—no fancy keyhole procedures. I was one of the first babies in New Zealand to undergo this operation, and while two of the five didn’t make it, I was one of the lucky three who pulled through.

Growing up wasn’t without its challenges. My mum battled breast cancer twice, undergoing double mastectomies. It was a tough time for our whānau, but we came out stronger together. As a kid, I had my fair share of mischief—stealing money from my parents’ tin box at ten years old, only to learn my lesson when they threatened a trip to the police! By 13, I was at it again, taking my sister’s car with a mate for a joyride spin. Let’s just say I timed my exit perfectly, I jumped out of the car before he crashed it, but I still had to pay for the damages.

Life’s taught me resilience, and I’m grateful for the lessons and the good times. Now, I’m on the hunt for a new chapter, looking for a job opportunity in security or customer service. Here’s to embracing the journey and what’s next!
#LifeLessons #Resilience #NewBeginnings

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Naomi and the crown of thorns

Naomi Anna Groet-Pairama

“I’ve always been a wild child since crossing through the portal onto this giant rock, diving into the human experience. From a young age, I felt everything deeply—in awe of the leaves on trees, the tiny ants tiptoeing across them, and the complex web of love and pain within me. Love has always been my gift, but with it comes a hefty dose of heartbreak. It’s a blessing and a curse, making me vulnerable and raw.

As I inch toward 29 laps around the sun, my journey has been filled with moments of pure joy and devastating heartache. Childhood trauma stole my innocence, forcing me to grow up much too fast. I soon fell into a passionate, yet destructive, affair with drugs and alcohol, from my preteens into adulthood—an ongoing struggle.

Creativity and passion have always defined me. I started as a chef, helping my dad with catering, then working at a fish and chip shop at 16, and completing my apprenticeship by 21. The kitchen made me feel alive, like I belonged somewhere. For the first time, I allowed myself a flicker of pride, pushing toward my goals with relentless determination. I believed I was in control, but in reality, I was battling my ego.

The industry’s stress, long hours, and external chaos pushed me deeper into addiction. I worked insane shifts, then spiraled into alcohol, cigarettes, and eventually harder substances—covering it all with a careful illusion of being fine. But the inevitable crash came. A traumatic incident pushed me to the edge, and I lost everything—my career, home, money, health, and sanity. I pushed away those who cared, convincing myself everyone was against me, living on a cocktail of uppers and downers.

Sometimes, it takes hitting rock bottom to climb back up. I consider myself lucky to have escaped that abyss. I worked hard to rebuild my life, moving away, finding a new job, and staying mostly sober—despite a few setbacks. Then I met my prince charming, who I idolized. But he was also battling addiction, and once again, I found myself on the rollercoaster. This time, I wanted more.

Fate had other plans—after five months of sobriety, I fell pregnant with our beautiful son. He truly saved me. His arrival reminded me what life is all about. I now focus on replacing old habits with healthy ones, transforming negative patterns into positivity. My goal is to be the best mother I can be, because my son deserves a healed, whole version of me.
Facing our shadows isn’t easy, but I believe our children deserve the most healed versions of ourselves. Letting go of shame—so ingrained in addiction—is a daily battle. The cravings never truly vanish; you learn to manage them, taking life one day at a time. I’ve realized I was living in fear and hiding from myself and others. But now, I’m stepping into my power, embracing my purpose. I refuse to be a victim of life—I am here to live it.
To anyone fighting the same battle: don’t give up. You’ve got this.❤️”

(c) Ilan Wittenberg

Calvin

Calvin Chan

“My name is Calvin, originally from South Africa, now calling New Zealand home since 2000. Growing up wasn’t easy—back then, I faced challenges on the other side of the racial divide in my home country. When I arrived in New Zealand, it was a fresh start, but I carried heavy baggage.
I was drinking heavily, downing two liters of scotch a week, straight, no chaser, just neat. It was my crutch.

Three years ago, something shifted—a gut feeling, a higher power, call it what you will. I knew I had to quit drinking. So, I did. Cold turkey. Not a drop since, and I’m proud of that.

But life had more tests for me. Soon after, I suffered a double stroke on the left side of my brain, which affected my left arm. Then, just over a year ago, I had a cardiac arrest. My friend stepped in, keeping me alive for 45 minutes until the ambulance arrived. My doctor was stunned I survived. He told me the odds were slim—only a 25% chance of surviving a cardiac arrest in a hospital with all the equipment, and out in the world? A mere 10%. I’d beaten the odds, like winning the lotto multiple times.

Thankfully, New Zealand’s incredible medical system stepped up. They implanted a defibrillator in my chest to shock my heart back into rhythm if it falters. That machine is my guardian angel.

Through it all, I found a new path. I’ve been sober for three years, and I’ve discovered a passion for stone carving. In just a year, I’ve made progress that’s amazed those around me. It’s more than a craft—it’s my way forward, a new chapter in my life”

I’m still here, defying the odds, and I’m grateful every day for it. Here’s to resilience, second chances, and finding beauty in the journey.”