I am Lianna. A MOTHER & A PHOTOGRAPHER.

I was working as a speech language therapist, helping teachers to give children a voice.  This was work that I felt mattered, and I loved it.  Then, our long-awaited daughter was born.  And everything.  EVERYTHING. Changed.

I have photos of that hazy, overwhelming, magical time.  I have beautiful, spotlessly perfect photos of my new baby.  They are exquisite (despite the stress it took to get them).  But the photos that really, really matter, are the photos that show the first moment the tiny, new life was laid on my breast.  The photos that show her curled like a limpet on her proud Daddy’s chest.  These photos matter because when I see them, I remember.  Not just what happened, not just what she looked like, but what she felt like.  Everything I felt bubbles up inside me.

I want all families to have photos that tell their real story.  This work, these stories:  they matter.  They connect us to the past and the future, they uncover what makes us human, they connect us to each other.  They, too, give us a voice.

I am Lianna.  I tell family stories through photographs, on the Kāpiti Coast, Wellington, Auckland, and throughout New Zealand.  Sometimes even in Australia.