Rachymarie

New year poem

2017-01-17T11:39:00.000+13:00

Starve the vampire that lurks beneath the skin
and feed the fire that's always been within;
Transcend the fatal flaw
that seeks to rot your human core
For the morally abhorrent
will be surpassed by love in a torrent;
When we learn to synergise
is when we will rise

Banish envy and vengeance from your modus operandi; access higher thought beyond instinct and rejoice in the happiness of others. We will be good to each other and 2017 will be good!

It's no Poe, but it's heartfelt and raw.

+ bonus all-time favourite Green Mile quote 👇

"I'm tired, boss. Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time. Can you understand?"

- John Coffey

💗💖💕Love, Rachel

But when you're withdrawn, it's the closest thing to assault when all eyes are on you - Lorde

2017-01-17T11:23:00.001+13:00

There's something really nice about having Blogspot, it's like the last place people I know in real life haven't found me. I have a quirky way of going about things, and must be about the most misunderstood creature on the planet. I know this is not an uncommon sentiment, but I feel it immensely.

I can never tell if people I know follow me (on Instagram and other places that they find me) out of genuine interest or are following to control, civilize, silence my strange voice and judge me behind my back, cultivating harmful common opinion and prescribing me their small-minded stereotypes/archetypes: but alas! I am nothing they will ever even begin to describe, let alone compact into one word, I am ever-evolving, to the point I can barely even keep up with myself. Hopefully it's the former, though anyone who knows me well knows I'm stubborn as a mule and no-one could ever control me unless I respected them enough to afford them the illusion of control. (Don't get me wrong, I can be really professional at work, I need to work towards a career, but my line of work (art and design) involves a lot of open mindedness and honesty. I am absolutely one of the most hardworking people I know, even if I am constantly on tangents, it builds towards something massive) In my life I have not met many who truly deserve respect, rather they expect it due to their rank or overconfidence etc.
I'm not so naive to believe there is any privacy out in the open on the internet and I'm sure someone I know is probably reading this and if you are I send you my love, but a corner to grow my mind and art away from people who anchor me into "reality" (aka "growing up" and settling into being a depressed office drone going through the motions like a robot) is vital to me. Why live a life so boring? We have so much damn potential!

It's funny: at first one tries to get followers and popularity, but in this day and age it feels free-er to be creating and airing opinion in the shadows, not subject to the witch-hunt that enforced by the such highly-regarded game of chasing normality.

I might start writing poetry on here.

I am immensely aware and at the mercy of my so-called failings ("no common sense", very slow, bad salesperson etc) being strange but so self-aware is like being in surgery with no anaesthetic or like those dreams where you're trying so hard to run but you just can't move, trying to talk with no mouth. This is why I take so many self-portraits, it helps me have some control and explore possibilities. I have an intense need to express, and no means to explore that in real life, where people's eyes burn holes in me.

I need an outlet, and I need overbearing people to be away from my place of outlet, they dull my vision and hamper my output.

Anyway, here is just a fraction of all the me's I have been: (this was teenage me)

I am working hard on a project about identity and stereotypes/archetypes so I will impart that to you, the void, or whoever enjoy my ramblings, soon. :)
And in a moment I will post a new year's poem I wrote on Facebook but then made it private because I grew uncomfortable sharing such rawness and hearing tumbleweed, filling in the deafening silence with insecurities and hatred from my so-called "friends".
Here there is no sense of obligation in the viewers, or sense of rejection when not met with any response, and I also love that.

Keep it real!

Read “Bravado” by Lorde on Genius

Beware of young girls

2016-10-13T18:06:00.000+13:00

♫

Beware of young girls

Who come to the door

Wistful and pale of twenty and four

Delivering daisies with delicate hands

♫

I have recently started watching Scream Queens out of interest (Ryan Murphy's work has always intrigued/entertained me, his productions are very into their meta-references) and heard for the first time "Beware of Young Girls" as one of the episode's closing songs.

Interesting tidbit: last year a customer came into work near closing time and seemed intrigued by me, then told me I really reminded him of “a young Mia Farrow” - who this song is about. This enticing charm and universal face I seem to have causes me to easily fit the innocent young-girl-temptress archetype and invoke in others resentment and often a controlling and prickly nature.

Also, I am newly 24 and those are the flowers from my birthday 2 weeks ago.

Interestingly, another young temptress was portrayed by another Mia, Mia Goth: her character in Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac was a wounded, strange, delicate creature, preyed upon with sinister intent; later turning the tables to become the cruel, vile love interest of the initial predator, Jo's formerly beloved.

It's always blamed on the young girl, when the truth is she was let down hugely by her elders and merely became a perfect scapegoat. This behaviour is likely to continue throughout the ages

Self-declaration / I want to protect you

2016-05-11T13:03:00.000+12:00

Self-declaration

MOODSONG:

♫♪♫ The Eels/ I Want to Protect You ♫♪♫

“I want to protect you
I want you to be safe and sound
At night in this world
Such a delicate girl needs someone
To look out for the wolves
I want to protect you”

Character one: Self heroine, the protector figure

Character two: The innocent

Initial plan

18/01/2016 I want to protect you

I forgot to add these on here for a while, so this story is from things that happened in January.
I started this photoshoot in a fit of exasperation to represent my feelings upon realizing that mostly people only want to protect and help what they want to f*ck - to be quite blunt. Something a guy I’d been involved with said the other day set me off and I went on a crazy mind journey wanting to show these feelings.
I was walking home in the rain after the conversation, trying angrily not to cry as the Eels’ love song played cruelly in my ears from my iPod. I decided, instead of moping, to roll with the punches and position myself as the protagonist hero of the song; my own Prince Charming. My realization is that I have to protect myself. I am becoming two different entities; the child and the protector. Trust only yourself in the end. Learning this kind of thing hurts a great deal but just remember to love yourself because you’re the only person that will be around you when no-one else is there for you. Here I’m thinking about how society makes women weak and reliant on Prince Charming; and the retaliation - even vitriol - we endure when we are no longer someone’s possession.

This is a song to myself.
♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫

The Eels - I Want to Protect You

What are we really teaching them?

2013-06-10T01:59:00.001+12:00

I found this old, puffy waterproof “bath book” that we used to read as children when I came home to stay with my parents in the break, and I was drawn to document it in an interesting way, while exploring the fascinating macro extension tubes I use to mimic an actual macro lens.

I am always interested in approaching the topic of media lies/what is fed to us, and the deeper implications that many of these everyday advertisements bring to the table, so I took to an idea of depicting the illustration of the legendary Pocahontas in this little children’s book in ways that aim to question and invoke in the viewer' an uneasiness, through the employment of compromising angles and carefully meditated selective lens focusing.

The series touches on the age-old concern over whether or not/how much the media indoctrinates the public and therefore the vulnerable/malleable, with dangerous falsities so commonly promoted throughout societal history. These falsities are those regarding the humanity - or lack thereof - with which we choose to portray and in turn view the ideals we have on women.
The illustrated version of Pocahontas used in this book are the exact version the Disney animated film account of Pocahontas’ story; Disney itself having been accused on a few counts of having sexual or questionable material not particularly suited to children featured subtly in some of its works.

I have found myself feeling sorrowful and disturbed at times when pondering the ramifications that come to follow exposing the young and naive eyes of a child to the over-simplified invitation into the horrific world of body-image fixation that comes to plague the mind of the adult being. Who are advertisers to draw these impressionable babies into an early adulthood? Does showing them only pretty princess types somehow work towards the deprivation of their grasp on reality and self-worth?
I also originally envisioned the title: “The Depth of our Understanding” for this series, but ended up with the title used on this post. Read the original title as the alternate title, if you will.

As this series is a somewhat brief exploration that I have not chosen to look too much further into as of yet, I have left the series’ aftertaste to be rather ambiguous and open to possibilities, leaving myself and the viewer to their own world of contemplation around the matter.

This is a playful experiment so I apologize if the images are a little technically off, or boring, or my stilted wannabe-essay language - I need to work on refining my writing skills as I have a life-long tendency to try to over-complicate things with long big wordy sentences. Oops. :)

And with that, I’m off to bed! It’s 2 in the morning oh my gosh!
But, hey, I’m on holiday!! Oh, alright.. I get bad bedtimes most of the time anyway because student hours and all.. :P
Understandably coffee is my best friend!

Hope you enjoyed! (If anyone’s reading - I like to at least kid myself that there is, better that way!)

Kissing Under Bridges Part 3

2011-08-02T15:16:00.002+12:00

Hey guys sorry that this is my version of soon (3 months later, oh lordy) but here we are, I'm finally ready to make that blog post of the "Kissing Under Bridges" photos I said were coming up. Here I will show the best ones but you can find more in my Flickr: Rachelmarie@

Let me know what you think in comments :)

Kissing Under Bridges Part 2

2011-08-02T15:15:00.001+12:00

Hey guys sorry that this is my version of soon (3 months later, oh lordy) but here we are, I'm finally ready to make that blog post of the "Kissing Under Bridges" photos I said were coming up. Here I will show the best ones but you can find more on my Flickr: Rachelmarie@

Let me know what you think in comments :)

...continued in Part 3

Kissing Under Bridges Part 1

2011-08-02T15:11:00.002+12:00

...continued in Part 2

Kissing Under Bridges Shoot Sneak Preview

2011-04-28T14:15:00.000+12:00

So the other day me n the bf went to Hastings in some secluded place and wandered about with my tripod and (Fujifilm Finepix s1000fd SLR) camera and a few bags of stuff taking photos together. I'm pretty pleased with the photos. It was the first time I've taken couple photos before, and it was cool. I've been editing them and I'm getting near the end so I'll upload them soon in my next post but for the mean time here's a preview gif of the shoot↓

Odd shoes and cropped denim jacket

2011-03-18T11:44:00.001+13:00

↑ So far this photo has 1,183 notes on Tumblr (here) and is also floating around the net. Pretty sweet huh? Kinda wish I had watermarked it now... :/ haha, didn't know it was going to be so popular...

↑ My twin thinks my odd shoes are gay, I don't mind, she's always judging me, I don't have to follow the masses that say you can only make it if you wear matching shoes.

Ch3ck my bbling yo. ↑

I love my denim crop jacket ↑

Leopard print

2011-03-18T11:23:00.000+13:00

Old photos

2011-03-18T10:38:00.000+13:00

Neopets! ↑

I'm begging you to be my escape ↑

My school project! [with photos]

2011-01-13T18:20:00.001+13:00

So in 2010 in my last year of high school I had my school photography and design portfolio boards to do. I had been up all night and what-not in the last week or two of school, and spending all of my school days wagging in the library trying desperately to finish my visual arts work by the deadline.

The Design and Photography work consisted of six A1-sized folio panels - three for Photography and the other three for Design, altogether worth 28 NCEA Level 3 credits on the New Zealand NCEA education system, AND an 8-A3page workbook showing my deep extensive thinking behind the content of the three Photography boards, so things in November were pretty hectic :P So now I have many new photos to share now after having to take so many to cover them boards!

My concept was dissociation, like, this girl who went into a dissociation fantasy world disconnected from reality, as an escape, defence mechanism etc. to all of the ordinary roboticness in everyday living without imagination and creativity. She feels hopeless, desperate for something more in life, and so goes to the place where she is free and there are random characters there e.g. a bunny and a bee and they are her friends and they are a bit wild and wacky, numbing herself to the realm of reality she once suffered in. I might elaborate on these ideas to you by posting some of my conceptual work from my scholarship workbook.

Here are photos:

I managed to get all of my boards and photography scholarship workbook to the courier that school had organised, narrowly avoiding having to borrow $50+ (NZD) from mum (despite already being in debt and unemployed) to go and send the boards to the courier myself if I missed the courier pickup the school organized which was free for us. For scholarship my workbook was a bit of a mess and I had about 20 artist models. But I hoped that they would see my intentions and ideas well because I have a lot of thinking and symbolism behind those boards.

I was pretty proud with myself and the outcome of my Photography folio boards, thinking an Excellence may even be in the question, but I just got my school results yesterday and unfortunately I didn't even pass the assessment for them! Bullshit in my opinion!

So that's what I get for being a last-minute worker. I guess all the disorganization resulted in me not reeeally exploring all the pictorial elements in mind.

So here is the final outcome of my photography boards, tell me what YOU think :) :

Board 1 Board 2

Board 3

Mommy's old hippie top!

2010-11-17T15:48:00.000+13:00

So I went through my mum's drawers of her old stuff that she used to wear when she was a hippie in her late teens and found this purple/pink top which is like a parachute me and my boyfriend decided yesterday whilst chasing a butterfly. Haha
Here are pictures:

2010-11-17T13:18:00.000+13:00

Star Trekkin' Across the Universe - Dr Demento
Haha crazy little song. Used to sing it in primary school

I always enjoy a spot of fairy bread

2010-10-05T13:12:00.006+13:00

Old days.

2010-09-21T21:54:00.000+12:00

Mucking around with Rosey:

At the Hawke's Bay show!

Taken by my old best friend Rosey. *sniff*

2010-09-21T20:59:00.000+12:00

We Have Band - Honeytrap

Smoking is bad.

2010-09-20T23:32:00.000+12:00

It's not the drinking...

It's how we're drinking.

The course of life.

2010-09-20T22:22:00.001+12:00

2010-09-20T20:26:00.001+12:00

Yo guys!

2010-09-20T05:08:00.002+12:00

I have spent some time redoing my blog. So now I am off for a two hour sleep before I have to go to school D:.
:)
Tata!

Here's one for the road.

This is where I am

2010-06-14T16:54:00.002+12:00

This is where I am., originally uploaded by RachelMarie@.