I have been in love with the alchemy of an image for as long as I can remember.
The girl in the darkroom.
As a teenager, I lived in the darkroom during my lunch breaks. Every day, while others ate and socialised and did whatever teenagers do, I was in that dim red light feeding film through developer, watching images emerge from nothing, completely and utterly captivated by the magic of it.
There was something about that moment – the image appearing slowly, quietly, out of the darkness that felt like the most important thing in the world to me. I did not have the language for it then. But I know now that what I was falling in love with was not just photography. It was the idea that something true and real and beautiful could be made visible. That what lives in the dark can be brought into the light.
I went on to study Visual Arts and majored in Photography. Back then everything was shot on film. The digital world was yet to emerge and I loved every analogue, unhurried, tactile moment of it. After graduating, life took me into graphic design. Over fifteen years of shaping visual stories, understanding composition, colour, light, and the quiet but powerful language of imagery. Fifteen years of the long way around to where I was always meant to be.
Stepping into the light.
Alongside my design career, I found my way back to photography, this time, turning the camera on myself. What began as creative exploration became something I could not have anticipated. Fashion labels approached me during Covid to model and photograph myself in their collections. It felt strange at first. I had never thought of myself as a model. But I picked up the camera, pointed it at my own face, and something began to shift.
With every self portrait, I saw myself differently. Not through the eyes of anyone else, not through the gaze of a partner, a friend, a stranger, but through my own. I began to understand, in a way that went beyond thought and into the body, that I was someone worth seeing. That the camera was not something to fear or perform for, but a mirror that could tell the truth.
I performed with a burlesque troupe, discovering in that world what it meant to inhabit a character fully and take up space without apology. And then I went further. I created and performed my own solo show, running across four weekends. Just me, accompanied by a saxophonist, a stage, and the most fearless version of myself I had ever inhabited. It was one of the most empowering experiences of my life. I did not know it then, but I was learning something that would one day become the foundation of everything – that stepping into a character, fully and unapologetically, can change the way you understand yourself forever.
I was building something. A life, a creative practice, a deep and growing understanding of what it means to be seen. I knew, in that unshakeable way that sits beneath words, that photography was what I was here to do.
When you have a deep knowing that you are doing the exact thing that is your purpose – that cannot be ignored.
Then the darkness came.
Then I found myself in a relationship.
In the beginning, things seemed good. He was charming and attentive and everything felt right. Until it didn’t. Before I truly understood what was happening, I was in deep with someone whose charm could vanish in an instant and leave something unrecognisable looking back at me.
What followed was manipulation, coercive control, violence, and s3xual assault.
By the time I escaped, I was completely broken. I closed my Airbnbs, businesses I had run for seven years, because I could not bear the thought of strangers near my home. I deleted my profiles. I stopped taking photographs. I stopped wanting evidence of myself. I isolated for months, not wanting anyone to know how bad it really was. I slept with the lights on. I kept a hammer beside my bed. I had security cameras installed all around my home and still did not feel safe. My nervous system was in a constant state of alarm. The PTSD was overwhelming.
The woman who had spent years building her confidence in front of a camera, the one who had loved the stage, loved being seen, loved the alchemy of her own image had disappeared completely.
I was not just hiding from the world. I was hiding from myself.
Finding the way back.
I could not stay there. I refused to merely exist. And I made a decision. I would not numb the pain. No alcohol, no substances, not even the antidepressants my doctor offered. In my mind, the only way back to myself was through feeling it all, in order to process it all.
Slowly, something began to return.
I learned how to move my body again. I found my way back to dancing. Small at first, tentative, then more and more like myself. After months of silence, I pushed myself back behind the decks. Music, which had always been part of who I was, began to flow through me again. And then one day, despite having lost every ounce of my creative spark, I picked up my camera and did a self portrait shoot.
What I created that day stopped me in my tracks.
Through all of the pain and suffering, I had managed to rise again – like a phoenix – and find my way back to myself.
The calling.
In that moment, looking at what I had created, I understood exactly what I was here to do.
My story is not unique. The number of women who have lived some version of it is staggering. Many do not make it out. Many are still inside it right now. And many who do escape spend years rebuilding themselves in private, never quite finding their way back to who they were before, or discovering who they might become on the other side.
I had spent years understanding, through my own healing, the power of somatic work. Of coming back into the body, of learning to feel safe in your own skin again. I have since been training formally in somatic practice, deepening my understanding of how the body holds experience and how it can be gently guided forward into safety, strength and self-expression.
And I realised that portrait photography – done with intention, with care, with a deep understanding of what it means to stand in front of a camera when you have been taught that being seen is dangerous, could be part of that healing. It could be one of the most powerful tools available.
Because when you see yourself reflected back as powerful, luminous, and whole – when you hold a portrait in your hands and see the woman, or man you are becoming looking back at you, something shifts that cannot be undone.
You have evidence.
Visual, tangible, undeniable evidence that
you are here. That you are real.
That you are more than
what happened to you.
My lens has found its true purpose now. In service of those ready to reclaim their story and step into the vision they have only ever quietly dared to dream.
Who you are meeting.
I am a Visual Arts graduate who majored in Photography. A graphic designer of fifteen years. A former model and burlesque performer who produced and performed her own solo show. A trained hair and makeup artist. A somatic practitioner in training. And a woman who has walked every one of the roads that led to this studio door.
When you come to me, you are coming to someone who understands. Not theoretically, but in her body and her bones, what it means to have been broken, and what it takes to come back. Someone who will hold the space for your session with the same care and reverence that was held for her when she needed it most.
I have been pouring my heart into creating a home studio on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. A space designed to feel like a safe haven. Every element in service of making you feel safe, seen, and free to step into whoever you are about to become.
Informed by somatic practice, every session is held with a deep understanding of how the body carries experience and how, with the right guidance, it remembers its own strength. This is not something you will find in any other photography studio. It is the thread that transforms a portrait session into something far more profound. A genuine experience of coming home to yourself. Most people have never imagined that a portrait session could offer this. That is exactly what makes this work unlike anything else.
This is only the beginning.
I share my story not because it is easy, but because I could no longer ignore the feeling that I was being called to. That my story was not mine alone to carry in silence. That speaking it out loud was part of my own healing and perhaps, a light for someone else who has been hiding in the dark.
If something in what you have read today has moved you, if you recognise yourself somewhere in these words, or feel the quiet pull of something stirring, I would love to hear from you.
The Reawakening, The Alchemy Session,
and the Couples experience are all waiting.
And so am I.
