Tag Archive for: Studio Photography

Nude Photography Auckland

Taylor Blake

Nude Photography Auckland

Taylor Blake

Gabrielle Wichman-Heremaia;

Nude Photography Auckland

Gabrielle Wichman-Heremaia;

Boxing Gloves

Gabrielle Wichman-Heremaia;

Boxing Gloves

Gabrielle Wichman-Heremaia;

Gabrielle Wichman-Heremaia;

Dana

Nude Photography Auckland

 

Nude Photography Auckland

Dana Costello

I had a beautiful golden childhood full of love, warmth and happiness. My mother got sick when I was eight with an autoimmune disease, she couldn’t walk. She was so unwell and needed around the clock care from my dad. Six months later my dad died. He was out tramping for the day with his friends, a young fit and healthy man. He had a heart attack and dropped dead. My world as I knew it exploded. My mum packed up and moved us to the West Coast of the South Island, to escape all the memories of dad. I was in a completely new town, no friends, no family and stuck with my bed ridden mother. By the age of nine I could cook a three course meal. Mum was too sick to feed me. I was in complete survival mode. Whenever mum would get up I would just want to hide, she was on over 15 different medications a day, she had road rage and would take it out on me. I solely bore the brunt of her pain. This was my reality all the way into my teenage years. When I was 13 our house burnt down and we lost nearly everything.

Again another massive loss and hurdle to conquer. When I was 16 I got extremely sick with meningococcal disease, it took months to be able to walk and move around properly again. It damaged my eyes and I needed glasses. I moved out of home at 16. I went back to Nelson to work for the summer and ended up staying. I would go to school during the week and work all of my weekends to be able to pay rent and afford food for the week. This was my reality for the remainder of high school. I had a lot of questions about religion, so after school I studied and got a diploma in biblical studies. But my true passion was to join the navy. My dad and brother were in the navy and from the age of 12 it was my dream. I joined at the age of 21 and haven’t looked back. I’ve now been in the navy for two years, pursuing the career of my dreams. I’ve met the man of my dreams and am so in love. For the first time in a long time I am happy, loved and appreciated. I don’t regret anything from my past, I wouldn’t change a thing. It has made me who I am today, a strong young woman.

Roma and Emmanuel

Nude Photography Auckland

Roma

I struggled with identity,
I still do, but I’m learning.

I’ve always struggled with mental health issues and after going through multiple violent trauma and being Passed around a very flawed mental health system, a few years ago finally I got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which is 110% a completely misunderstood disorder to say the least.

It can affect multiple aspects of your life and is different for everyone who experiences it. For me, my sense of self and emotional control and thought patterns are mostly affected.
Which means I can be very reactive to situations, sometimes more than what’s accepted by others and always more than I wanted to.
My thoughts can get mixed up because there are too many, or I have one thought that does not leave my mind and it can become an obsession.
Knowing who I am as a person and what I want can also be challenging. 

I teach children’s yoga and mindfulness as it was something that helped me when nothing else could and to hopefully set up our kids for an open minded self-accepting future with skills, tools and the ability to cope better with the roller coaster of our emotional stressful lives.

I like to model so I know exactly who to be at that moment.
I find it freeing, almost trapping myself in a ‘character’ or a ‘setting’ you could say.
For a short period of time I know what to do, who to be and how to do it.

I said yes to taking part in this display of beautiful women for the chance to feel like I am exactly who I am meant to be for a short period of time.
To empower other women to feel like they can be themselves not just for a short period of time but all of the time,
To feel beautiful and strong, ugly and weak, put together and messy all at the same time because that’s what life is and we should be so fucking proud of it.
You can’t have one without the other.
You may not be able to have everything you have ever wanted.
But you can have your own slice of perfection and that perfection is you.

Bare Truth

The view through the window…

Portrait Photographer Auckland

Sophie

The view through the window…

These eyes have seen
my mother survive cancer
my dog being put to sleep
my grandfather’s funeral

 

These eyes have seen
learning-to-read books; uni textbooks
laptop screen at 3am before a deadline(s)
celebrations at graduation parties

 

These eyes have seen
faces of new friends
friends I no longer talk to
faces changing, growing up (old)

 

These eyes have seen
numbers on calorie-counting apps
worth through a weight on a scale
friends in hospital (anorexia)

 

These eyes have seen
NYE and sunrise at Tawharanui
bull sharks (no cage) in Fiji
climate protest marches in Madrid

 

These eyes have seen
glaciers in New Zealand
fjords in Norway
northern Lights in Finland

 

These eyes have seen
Disneyland on my brother’s birthday
Gallipoli cemeteries on ANZAC Day
too many death tolls on the News

 

These eyes have seen
dreams – forgotten, come true, work-in-progress
love – unconditional, and conditional
myself – stronger, wiser, more loving
you – unknown, but endless potential

Helen Main

Nude Photography Auckland

Helen

Trigger Warning: Discussion of physical & emotional abuse.

This comes as a surprise to some people (sometimes I reflect back in total disbelief – it’s easy to think it wouldn’t happen to you) but this time 5 years ago I was trying to leave an abusive relationship. Over the space of 12 months I had made multiple attempts to leave. I couldn’t tell you why I’d go back each time, only that the general belief, held by all parties was that it was all I deserved. 

How did I end up there? I was an intelligent, strong willed young woman who had very clear views about domestic abuse & those who inflict it. But, although I didn’t really acknowledge it, I was, at that point in my life very alone. I had few close friends, and this was complimented by a distant relationship with my family & not much in the way of self-worth.

I was so desperate to be loved, to be chosen, that I ignored the early red flags (I called myself difficult & needy instead). He charmed me – nice dinners, a holiday, buying me clothes etc. But when he moved in with me, things started to slip, slowly at first.

I remember the first time we really fought. A neighbour called the cops. He played nice to them & angrily blamed me for it later. If I had only not gotten upset, he wouldn’t have gotten angry at me. I cringe now when I think of how I grovelled & apologised to him. 

 Every fight we had would cripple me with shame & self-hatred. I was reading every article I could on healthy relating. I went to therapy to try and isolate the problem in myself so I could cut it out & patch myself back together. I thought if I could fix myself, he would stop getting angry with me. If I could just stop being difficult, he’d stop cutting me off, refusing to talk to me for days at a time or kicking me out at all hours of the morning.

But you can’t fix a relationship by yourself, and you can’t heal yourself in order to stop someone else hurting you.

 It took him two years to hit me. The first thing he did after he whacked me was tell me it was a mistake & to not tell anyone. And I didn’t, not for months. Not until well after I finally got out.

He only hit me once. I wish I could say that that was because I left, but it was because he seemed to prefer other tactics – dragging me over furniture to kick me out, holding me against the wall by my throat, once he even picked me up and physically threw me onto the concrete outside, amongst other things.

I list all these physical things, but in honesty, those things were secondary to the verbal & emotional abuse & the scars it left.
I still experience emotional flashbacks, triggered by any number of things – some identified, some which take me by surprise – in which it’s as if I shift into a dual existence, with the memories & emotions overlaying reality like a double exposure photograph, and my mind will react to the Now as if it was the Then. It’s exhausting & confusing and sometimes lasts for hours.

 I still get panicky if someone misunderstands me and sometimes if people react in a neutral, emotionless manner (especially in a romantic relationship) my reflex response is fear. Its frustrating & difficult, I often feel sorry for those who have had to deal with me in my darkest moments.

I wish I could be more upbeat about it all, and say I’m now a happy, confident woman with a loving husband & a house full of animals but recovering from these kinds of things is a long & difficult road. In saying that I’m slowly healing. I’m in therapy &n the progress I’m making, uneven as it is, is leading me into a world where I can be vulnerable with others, feel safe expressing myself & enjoy authentic connections with a selection of truly wonderful friends.

 I also have a career as a personal trainer & pole dance teacher. I love my work and am hugely passionate about creating a safe space for others to get in touch with their bodies, express themselves & explore their physical potential – all things I found immense value in as I was putting myself back together. 

I don’t have any advice for those affected by abuse that isn’t talked about more articulately elsewhere. Removing yourself from abusive dynamics is never as simple as it might seem from the outside, and it follows that advice that works for one person won’t work for another. All I can say is – try to hold onto your Self, in whatever capacity you can & when you are ready to make the move, you will know. The road out is tough, but every step is worth it.

 

Michael

Portrait Photographer North Shore

Michael

Leon

Portrait Photography North Shore

Mareah

Nude Photography Auckland

Mareah

 

This is my call for those suffering in silence, crippled by the pain of stigma. I see you. I feel you. It is so scary for me talk about this, my heart is pumping so fast. Oh my god. I am feeling so tired even thinking about this subject.
I grew up in religion. And that meant that I was raised with a lot of shame around sex and sexuality and get we have to wait till we’re married, to have sex, and from a really early age I was like eight. And I was getting all the sensation in my body and then explore it and like sneaking around and talking to boys and girls and, oh it was, it was fun, but I held so much shame around being so young, and just wanting to know my body, as a young woman, a young girl, and there was no education around what pleasure was and what was safe and what wasn’t safe and I was told from super early that, anything to do with sex you just got to wait until you’re married and then we can talk about it. So my whole life I grow up, and I just held so much shame for this expression inside of me/
When I became a teenager, this desire to be intimate with myself and with other people led on to drinking and doing a lot of drugs and just wanting to feel free with my body and I slept with a lot of people, and I did a lot of dumb things in, in a way of numbing, in a way of trying to navigate this whole exploration and releasing the shame. I didn’t want to feel shame, but everything to do with sex and sexuality and pleasure, just fucking held so much weight over me. And as I grew up, and when I was a young adult, I slept with a lot of people. And in about four years ago, I contracted herpes.
It wasn’t a big deal for the last four years because I was married, actually, I got it just before I got married. I haven’t had to have this conversations with new sexual partners, for me to be in full integrity with this. I want to share the message, I want to be talking to people if I’m going to engage with somebody and have sex with somebody I want to be open, because I feel like this is such a fucking important conversation that we need to be having, normalizing and to releasing the shame that is all over sexually transmitted diseases. I’ve been feeling more ready to start being honest and I want to start exploring sex with new people. It’s just been coming up like choking me, and I, I just don’t want to have this power over me anymore. I want to feel empowered around this subject and I feel like to release the shame around this, you got to fucking own it, and to stare it in the face and be like, ‘yo, this is a thing’, and this is the situation, and you can take it or leave it in terms of connecting and communicating with other people.
I have this thing, and now you have the information you get to make your choice like I want to be upfront with people and share what’s going on for me, and herpes is that thing, and I’m fucking done with feeling shame about it anymore because it’s not worth it. I don’t know what the statistics are but fucking a huge percent of fucking people have it, and there’s no conversation and people are suffering in fucking silence, alone, by themselves, like, thinking that this thing, the shame of the actual thing, is so much worse than the actual thing itself. And if we can start talking about it and having dialogue about this thing, then there won’t be so much shame, because collectively the the narrative of the story needs to shift.
So I’m going to be a part of that. This is really, really huge for me and, yeah, I just want to be a voice I want to be here. And if other people are experiencing this as well. I would love to start this conversation. If you are suffering with sexually transmitted diseases, you’re not broken, you are not ruined. There is life here, and the right people who are willing to hold space for you and hold you in love and with compassion and to see you in your truth and love you for all of who you are, not just for parts of you. Those are your fucking people.

2021 Iris Awards

2021 Iris Awards

2021 Iris

Helen 1

Cats Forever

Cats Forever

Ilan Wittenberg Photographer

Interview

Devi

Nude Photography Auckland

Devi

Nude Photography Auckland

My name is Devi, I immigrated from Brazil to New Zealand six years ago in 2015. I was born on a small farm in Sao Paulo Brazil, but unfortunately, at the age of 5 my family had to move to the city because of a tragic accident: I lost my left eye!
I was raised in a strict Christian religious family model that helped me adopt good values. These principles include the ideas that women should always be very well behaved and obedient to her husband. The big aspiration was always that I will find a good man to get married and build a family. Nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t work so well for me…
So I got married with my first boyfriend at the age of eighteen years old, virgin, with no experience in life. Consequently this marriage didn’t work out and I divorced my husband at the age of twenty three. I was full of guilt that I had ashamed and disappointed my family and my church community, so I tried to get some support from members of the minister of the church. In one meeting, which was run by men, they didn’t even listen to me and kept saying: “Forgive your partner, he is a good man”. I felt that I had no voice and that I was not supported. Because of this so many women are still in toxic relationships. You simply do not have any support, you just have to be brave and own your decisions independently.
I then decided to leave the church and started to write down my biography. While all these things happened, I never stopped working or studying. I had to work very hard to pay for my own university. I travelled more than two hours every day to work at the bank and at night I went to the university.
When I completed my university studies, I met a nice guy at work in the bank. We fell in love and moved to Costa Rica because of his work. Four months later we were together and this rhymes crazy, right? Haha, I think that Brazilians go too deep and too quickly in feelings of romance, it was an amazing experience for both of us! We were living in a Caribbean country and we were totally in love, but after two years we decided to return back to Brazil because we had more professional opportunities in our own country.
Unfortunately, after four years together our relationship deteriorated. He became a workaholic which brought nice things to our lives: we bought a luxury apartment and built a beautiful life. Everybody could see how amazing we looked together but I started to ask myself if I was living this lifestyle because people said it was nice to have or because I really like it to be like that. I had a nice life and nice work, working in the office paying my bills, what could be wrong? This is traditionally how the books tell us the formula for happiness.
In my case nothing of this really fulfilled me. I decided to immigrate to New Zealand at the age of 30, just so I could accomplish one old dream: to learn English and maybe start a new life. After a while, we broke up. This was the hardest chapter of my life. I felt all these feelings again: disgraced for leaving everything behind me. But today I see I was just trying to discover who I am, what I really like. Because according to my upbringing, I couldn’t be by myself when I was in Brazil. I just hated being a woman because I was ashamed to show my body.
The problems just started. Immigration is never easy, the only money I had I paid it all for a Visa which allowed me to stay in New Zealand. No money, no love, with my heart broken to so many pieces. All alone, I felt so lost with no English, it was the most challenging and important time of my life, I had to keep positive and strong because I didn’t have choices to look back and go back to Brazil, I just tried to grab every good opportunity, to learn, to grow as a person and as a professional. I can tell I started to live again thirteen years later, hahaha. Because I now feel free to fully express myself and not caring about being judged as a woman that left home for all kinds of crazy adventures that you can imagine. It was intense and taught me a lot about who I really am.
When things started to get better I met the future father of my son and I got pregnant unexpectedly. This is another very hard chapter of my life (I feel the tears coming down my face right now). I was sleeping on the floor, sharing a mattress with my Mexican friend Denisse and sharing a flat with more than ten people. I was working as a cleaner in the evening and studying business at night, so I couldn’t stop working because I had to pay for rent and for food, my partner supported me as much as he could but we were in shock and he broke up with me. After this episode I got depressed and I felt very lonely. I just remember staying in this flat. The weekends looked so long, everybody left and I felt so down. I didn’t want to go out but was totally hopeless, still having to clean and to study without any money. What future could I give to my son? But I tried to keep positive.
I had good people around me who supported me and I became calmer. My partner and I got back together when I was eight months pregnant. We decided to live together and to raise a beautiful boy. I now have my own cleaning business and work as a model as well.
In New Zealand I discovered dance which helps me to connect to myself, to express my feelings, to give me confidence and to pose in front of the camera. I just realized that all these bad things happened to me in order to teach me a lesson: you always have to believe in yourself and never give up. Always follow your dreams!
You will probably feel lonely and lost but the beautiful things of life are born through pain. So life has ups and downs, you just have to dance with the flow. For women specifically, accept yourself as you are. Try to live according to your beliefs even if you don’t have any support. Life is too short and too beautiful, don’t hide yourself. I am still learning and discovering who I am, but I have completely changed since the day I left Brazil. I now feel great about being a woman. I am not ashamed to show my body. It is quite freedom and liberating.

Mareah

Nude Photography AucklandNude Photography AucklandNude Photography Auckland

Brooke

Fine Art Photography

Lilly

Brooke

Nude Photography Auckland

Beautiful Brittany

Nude Photography Auckland

Beautiful Brooke