Genetic Vulnerabilities
I used these in my final year at Unitec. Unfortunately, I didn’t complete my degree. At the time, I was still drinking quite heavily, and the long drive to Unitec’s Mount Albert campus often felt exhausting. Looking back, it was a challenging period of my life, balancing study, travel, and personal struggles.
This is my workspace here in supported living. This is my space with my hardware equipment here to allow me to blog.
I’ve never used the crystal ball, it was a gift from a friend. I keep it covered up.
I miss my family but I don’t think Christmas is going to happen this year. For various reasons I think I’ll most likely be here on Christmas day, but with all my heart I wish I could be with my son’s family.
I’m with Godaddy as a host, they advertise as the biggest domain owner in the world. I find their service to be quite testing. I’m going to have to recover my account again. I’ll do that tomorrow.
I’m looking forward to moving it over to another company here in New Zealand, but for now my hosting is paid for. Unfortunately I’ve found them to be difficult to work with. They charge for security which should be included. At least it used to be.
I had that sorted. Now I’ve got a battle on again. Such is life, it’s a test.
Life in supported living continues one day at a time. Between appointments, budgeting, doctor’s visits, and paying down debt, there is always something that needs attention. Thankfully, things are moving in the right direction.
I’ve been here longer than I expected. I don’t particularly like the boss. Some time ago she told me not to trust her, thus I don’t.
Recently I’ve started photographing the things that make up my life. I’m interested in recording my identity, my surroundings, and my lifestyle as it is now. The photo above was taken in poor light, so the quality isn’t the best, but it still tells part of the story.
The flower prints on my wall will probably be the subject of my next post. They are part of the space I’ve created around myself.
For now, my mobile phone and Gmail are the tools I use to download images and add them to my blog posts.
Some of these are from my collection, I used to save my medication boxes because I knew at some point I would be studying art again.
I used a glue gun as an adhesive, fortunately I didn’t have to take them down. This was at a particularly hard time of my life. I ended up in hospital with cellulitis on my foot. I didn’t realise how dangerous it could be. One of the staff members took me to hospital and I was in there for a few days whilst they did their magic on my foot.
I gathered the boxes one collection at a time from different pharmacists, never quite sure how many I would end up with. Eventually there were enough to almost fill a room. Their sheer number gave them a presence that a single box could never have achieved. The work became my final Diploma submission.
The timing was difficult because I was dealing with grief, and I could have sought special consideration. Instead, I decided to submit the work as it was. Whatever its strengths or weaknesses, it represented that particular period of my life and study honestly.
Photograph created during my Diploma studies at the Rutherford satellite campus. Using a lightbox I found through Freecycle, I experimented with light and image-making outside the assessed coursework.
Although the work was not included in my Diploma submissions, I was pleased with the results and kept the photographs as part of my personal creative journey.
The card appears to reproduce a classical religious painting showing:
The filename “LA MADONNA BELLE ARTIE” suggests the card may be referring to“La Madonna” (Italian for “The Madonna”), although I can’t verify the exact title from the image alone.
The wording “Original Printing in Prado Madrid” on the card most likely means the image was reproduced from a painting associated with the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, which holds many Renaissance and religious masterpieces and offers reproductions from its collection. [tiendaprado.com]
The image quality and color palette remind me of works by Renaissance artists such as Raphael (Raffaello) or painters influenced by him, but I cannot reliably identify the exact artwork from this photograph alone.
If there is any text on the back of the card, along the edge, or inside the card, a photo of that text would help identify the painting much more accurately. Often Christmas cards include the artist’s name, painting title, museum attribution, or publisher information in small print.
The Madonna of the Harpies (Madonna delle Arpie) is one of the most famous paintings by Andrea del Sarto, completed in 1517 and now housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. [en.wikipedia.org], [uffizi.it]
The painting depicts the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, accompanied by Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint John the Evangelist, with two cherubs at the base of the pedestal. [uffizi.it], [artsandcul…google.com]
The title comes from the strange creatures carved into the pedestal on which Mary stands. The art historian Giorgio Vasari identified them as harpies, mythological monsters, giving the work its traditional name. Modern scholars often interpret them instead as the locusts described in the Book of Revelation, symbolizing evil forces overcome by the Virgin Mary. [uffizi.it], [en.wikipedia.org]
Key facts
The work is considered a masterpiece of the High Renaissance. It combines the balanced composition associated with Raphael, the monumental figures inspired by Michelangelo, and the soft, subtle coloring influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. [uffizi.it], [uffizi.it]
Many art historians regard it as Andrea del Sarto’s best-known work. [en.wikipedia.org]
The Legend of the Silent Pool is a famous English ghost legend associated with Silent Pool, a spring-fed lake in Surrey, England. [en.wikipedia.org]
According to the legend, a beautiful woodcutter’s daughter was bathing in the pool when she was approached by a nobleman, often identified in later versions as King John. Frightened by his advances, she moved farther and farther into the deep water to escape him. Unable to save herself, she drowned in the pool. In some versions of the story, her brother also attempts a rescue and dies with her. [Haunted Ma…ilent Pool], [presenthistory.co.uk], [atlasobscura.com]
Local folklore says that her ghost still haunts the lake. Visitors have claimed to see a pale female figure on the water or hear cries coming from the pool at night. [Haunted Ma…ilent Pool], [atlasobscura.com]
The legend contributes to the eerie reputation of Silent Pool, whose clear, still waters and secluded setting have inspired stories of mystery and haunting for centuries. [atlasobscura.com], [en.wikipedia.org]
If you’d like, I can also retell the legend as a short atmospheric story in a folklore style.
The Holy Family by Michelangelo, better known as the Doni Tondo, is one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. It was painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti around 1505-1506 and is housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It is regarded as the only finished panel painting by Michelangelo that survives today.
Key features:
Artistic significance: The figures are powerful and sculptural, reflecting Michelangelo’s background as a sculptor. The painting is considered an important precursor to the artistic style known as Mannerism.
“Sacra Famiglia” simply means “Holy Family” in English. The work is therefore often called The Holy Family (Doni Tondo).
These three photographers are often discussed together because all use photography to explore identity, personal experience, and women’s lives, but they approach those themes quite differently.
An Israeli-American fine art photographer known for intimate, autobiographical work about family, motherhood, aging, relationships, and the body. Her photographs are often close, emotional, and deeply personal. Her work is held in major collections including MoMA, and she has published books such as Mother and Midlife. elinorcarucci+1
Key themes:
Style: Warm, intimate color photography with a strong emotional connection to her subjects. elinorcarucci
A Lebanese-born American photographer whose work focuses on girls and women across the United States and the Middle East. Her projects explore identity, adolescence, womanhood, belonging, and cultural experience. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and has exhibited internationally. raniamatar+1
Key themes:
Notable projects:
Style: Thoughtful portraits that balance intimacy with wider social and cultural questions.raniamatar
A Finnish photographer and video artist whose work combines autobiography, self-portraiture, conceptual art, performance, and art history. She frequently appears in her own images and often uses humor, experimentation, and references to earlier artistic movements. elinabrotherus+1
Key themes:
Notable series:
Style: Conceptual, reflective, often playful, frequently incorporating performance and self-representation. elinabrotherus +1
| Photographer | Best Known For | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Elinor Carucci | Family and personal life | Intimate, emotional autobiography |
| Rania Matar | Portraits of girls and women across cultures | Socially engaged portraiture |
| Elina Brotherus | Self-portraiture and conceptual work | Performative, art-historical, experimental |
If you’re studying contemporary photography or looking for inspiration for your own visual-art practice, these three make an interesting trio: Carucci explores the private self, Matar explores identity through community and culture, and Brotherus explores identity through performance and artistic ideas.
In my current creative development, I am exploring female identity in middle age through photographic processes, autobiographical writing, and visual research. This project brings together my memoir work.
Women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s often enter what researchers call the “invisible age,” a period where cultural attention shifts away from them. Yet this stage is rich with transition: hormonal change, shifts in family structure, new independence, and the re‑evaluation of self. Contemporary photographers such as Adi Carucci, Rania Matar, and Elina Brotherus have shown how middle‑aged identity can be reclaimed through honest, intimate, and self‑determined visual practices.
Their work resonates with my own experience of rebuilding identity after long periods of instability, supported living, and personal change. Photography becomes a way of being seen again — by myself and by others.
The academic work I am currently reading — Identity Map: A Step‑By‑Step Guide to Using Self‑Portraits in Identity Research (Sica, 2026) — outlines how self‑portraits can reveal:
This project will combine:
I will create a series of images that explore my current self, my past self, and my possible future selves. These will be paired with short reflective texts, forming a hybrid visual‑narrative body of work.
The camera itself — thick, painted black, fed from the top — becomes part of the story.
This project contributes to ongoing conversations about:
It is also a deeply personal exploration of how identity shifts in supported accommodation, recovery, and creative re‑emergence.
This blog post marks the beginning of my research phase — a space where theory, autobiography, and digital image‑making come together to explore who I am, who I have been, and who I am becoming.
While my Canon 650D is currently awaiting professional cleaning, I am using basic phone photography to begin exploring the visual themes of this project. Phone images allow me to work immediately and intuitively, capturing moments of self‑reflection, environment, and daily life.
This early phase is important: it lets me test ideas, observe how I respond to being photographed, and begin mapping identity through simple, accessible methods. These images act as sketches — visual notes that will later inform my work with the DSLR.