photography

Persevere by Rebecca Tillett

I will persevere, when your skin cracks open beneath my fingers, when your bones become too brittle to hold you up, when light and dark are indecipherable, when ribbons of your blood weep to the floor threatening to drown us both, I will laugh at the audacity, I will inflate my lungs in defiance and I will hold on, I will persevere.

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Her Hands Will Embrace Your Throbbing Throat by Rebecca Tillett

Her smile will level you
Quite like her big green eyes
Nestled unassumingly behind
Her fluttering lids
But her hands will embrace
Your throbbing throat and squeeze
Until your lips turn blue
And your memories of her
Dissolve into the blinding stench
f dreams unrealized.

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360//365 by Rebecca Tillett

A friend once told me "Denver has no soul." Until then, I hadn't been able to articulate exactly why I didn't take to the city and ever since and in every comparably sized city I visit, I find myself searching for its soul, its unmistakeable aura and personality like the feeling you get when meeting a stranger for the first time, that primal sense based only on feeling and emotion and in almost every one, it is unquestioningly undeniable.

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351//365 by Rebecca Tillett

Could I say it's been 16 years and I hardly think of you anymore? Could I say I've forgotten so many of the sad details of your life that helped to paint my own in such vividly dark colors? Could I say I've forgiven you for robbing me of a life without a father, the opportunity to open my heart to you and spill 16 years of pain, now doubled, the sudden way you changed and redefined my life, or the way you didn't say goodbye?

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347//365 by Rebecca Tillett

My fingers follow the roads and highways of your back,
reading it like a map
Every mole and freckle, a rest stop
On my way to the scenic bridge of your neck,
An overpass with breathtaking views
Breaking there to get my bearings
To will the flashing of my life
Before my fingers’ eyes Jump, jump, fly
and I find them alive on the rugged trail of your jawline
tip-toeing through rough terrain
The land moves easily here
And my fingers sway in alliance
As they travel north and linger
On the rim of the hollow of your eye
The universe

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Innermost by Rebecca Tillett

So what now? As I was shooting this intimate set last weekend and scrunching my face up in disapproval at each glance of every image, I thought to myself "Maybe this is it for my self-portrait work. Maybe it was a good run but I'm getting old and less thrilled at my appearance and maybe it's time to retire as my own model." And now especially, with a lack of a good spot for photos, the incentive to give this side of my work a break is quite high.

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332//365 by Rebecca Tillett

What can you tell me now that you couldn’t one year ago? Could you tell me how your reflection in the mirror has changed with such fervent subtlety that you hardly recognize the person you once were? Could you describe to me the palpable feeling of the shattering of such long-held presumptions of yourself? Could you tell me how fucking beautiful the silencing of such familiar doubts in your head can be? Could you tell me how your smile is an accessory you rarely leave home without?

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Brandice, Joel and Ethan by Rebecca Tillett

It's probably obvious, based on my usual subject matter, that family photography is not my forte. I sometimes make exceptions for those I've shot previously or anyone close to me in my life but even then, I tend to have a "Thanks for asking but that's not my specialty" ready to go in my arsenal of responses to the "Won't you take pictures of my family?" question, just in case.

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321//365 by Rebecca Tillett

Blanket me with the soft shroud of the setting sun's fiery mantle of clouds before I get too lost in the cold dark of the universe, before the moon soothes me to sleep with its stories of brave explorers who long ago hovered sweetly above its lonely ground, before my fingers become raw with lucid memories of the earth's thorny skin.

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New York City by Rebecca Tillett

It was 2010 and I had traveled to New York City, just to see it, for the very first time in my life. It was endless and overwhelming in its sheer enormity. I remember wondering how the land hadn’t sunk straight into the ocean from the weight of all the unevenly placed buildings and frenzied people scurrying in and out of them, oblivious to their doomed and drowning fates.

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302//365 by Rebecca Tillett

The city swallowed you whole, but you climbed its walls to spite its fervor, digging your fragile claws into the merciless concrete, yearning to escape and inflate your lungs with the unstained air. Run like wildfire, baby, before they gauge your eyes from their sockets, before the hollowed savages press their sawlike teeth into your penetrable flesh and tear, tear, tear.

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