Michelle Gemma Photoshoots

WAX and WANE: The Full Moon of February 2021

Hymn to Demeter

The Earth Goddess Demeter went to Eleusis in search of her daughter Persephone, who had been abducted by Hades , God of the Underworld.

Demeter goes in search of Persephone and, during her journey, reveals her secret rites to the people of Eleusis, who had hospitably received her. Her distress at her daughter’s disappearance was said to have diverted her attention from the harvest and caused a famine.

The Mysteries at Eleusis originated in the two-fold story of Demeter’s life—her separation from and reunion with her daughter and her failure to make the queen’s son immortal.

The Mysteries began with the march of the mystai (initiates) in solemn procession from Athens to Eleusis. The rites that they then performed in the Telesterion, or Hall of Initiation, were and remain a secret.

Another important aspect of Demeter was that of a divinity of the underworld; she was worshiped as such at Sparta, and especially at the festival of Chthonia at Hermione in Argolis, where a cow was sacrificed by four old women. The epithets Erinys (“Avenger”) and Melaina (“the Black One”) as applied to Demeter were localized in Arcadia and stress the darker side of her character.

featuring Model: Jane Anderson
all photographs by Michelle Gemma
The Full Snow Moon of February
in Virgo, Honoring the Myths of Seasonal Renewal,
for the Full Moon Photoshoots series
27 February 2021
Norwich, CT  USA

source text: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Demeter

New Moon in Gemini

“The numerology on this NEW MOON in Gemini is beautifully dyadic, as we have lots of Gemini in the chart and lots of 2’s; the Sun and Moon are both at 2 degrees in Gemini, and Venus and Mercury are at 20 degrees in Gemini on the 22nd in 2020.
We can see how this reverberated dual reflection aptly plucks the strings of the polarizing vibrations of the times.
But Gemini encompasses more than just the dual nature, and reflects a wide spectrum of perspectives, possibilities and communications.
The Gemini archetype shows us how we can create a kaleidoscope of inclusion with the multiplicities of form, just as is reflected by the very diverse nature of our natural world.”
https://www.mysticmamma.com/new-moon-in-gemini-may-22nd-2020/

featuring Model: Caroline Walz
Watch Hill, RI  USA
Photograph by Michelle Gemma
for the series “Personal Universe”

International Dylan Thomas Day 14 May 2020

An international day to celebrate the life and work of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, held each year on 14th May, the anniversary of the date when Under Milk Wood was first read on stage at 92Y The Poetry Center, New York in 1953.
“International Dylan Thomas Day gives us a chance each year to celebrate Dylan Thomas’s achievements. There is still the enthusiasm for a national day to mark my grandfather’s life and legacy and we want to keep May 14th as a prominent date on the literary calendar.
Dylan Thomas’s writing has travelled through time – it is as relevant today in our troubled times as when it was written sixty-five years ago. It continues to travel across the globe reaching new audiences everyday. His poetry lives on.
We invite you to tell us about how you are going to mark the day and encourage you, wholeheartedly, to get involved and to love the words.” — Hannah Ellis, Granddaughter of Dylan Thomas
https://www.discoverdylanthomas.com/news-events/international-dylan-thomas-day

The photographer Rollie McKenna was at this 92Y reading of Under Milk Wood, to photograph Dylan Thomas, and she writes this in her autobiography, Rollie McKenna: A Life in Photography (Knopf, 1991),
“Dylan Thomas’s career didn’t truly take off until he ‘hit’ the United States. Readings at the Poetry Center and tours throughout the country where–in his own words–he ‘boomed and fiddled while home was burning,’ all but devoured him. The money he made, so necessary to support his family, passed through his fingers like water. The praise, so addictive, was fleeting. Still, he wanted to read again to his vastly appreciative American audiences and, above all, to write the final ending to his play for voices, Under Milk Wood. 
Frenetic reading tours, sycophant-laden parties and late-night bar-hopping exhausted him, and just an hour before rehearsing the actors for the first New York performance of Under Milk Wood, Dylan was in particularly bad shape.  On arriving at the Poetry Center, he vomited, declared that he could not possibly go on and collapsed in the green room. After half an hour, he was shaken awake.  Pulling himself together, he directed for an astonishing three hours, urging the actors over and over:  ‘Love the words.  Love the words!’  I was so dumbfounded by his recovery that I almost forgot to shoot.
When the night of May 14, 1953, arrived, the theater was packed.  The audience, silent at first, then tittering, finally exploded into laughter on realizing that this was no highbrow affair but a loving, ribald tribute to a village.  Dylan took fifteen curtain calls as tears slipped down his face.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/17/books/pictures-from-a-life.html

In celebration:
featuring Model: Liz Walz
Stonington, CT  USA
Photograph by Michelle Gemma
for the series “Personal Universe”

NEW MOON in Aries 24 March 2020

New Moon in Aries 24 March 2020
featuring Model: Lehla Cheyenne
as my Aries
First Sign in the Zodiac
First Shoot in my astrological series Personal Universe.
Welcome to the Terrordome:
“I got so much trouble on my mind
Refuse to lose
Here’s your ticket
Hear the drummer get wicked”
Photograph by Michelle Gemma
Stonington Borough, CT  USA

 

Fade Into You

featuring Model: Morgan Vail
as my Cancer
from the Personal Universe series
water signs in Pisces season
15 February 2018

Photograph by Michelle Gemma
“You live your life, you go in shadows
You’ll come apart and you’ll go blind
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what’s not there”
lyrics from “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star, from their second album, So Tonight That I Might See, released in 1993.

WAX and WANE: The Full Moon of January 2020

Spacecraft escaping the Solar System

Distance from Sun (AU)      Pioneer 10: 125.220      Pioneer 11: 103.732      Voyager 2: 122.804      Voyager 1: 148.103      New Horizons: 46.357                                                                                                                                  

Speed relative to Sun (km/s)      Pioneer 10: 11.934      Pioneer 11: 11.224      Voyager 2: 15.326      Voyager 1: 16.967      New Horizons: 13.975       
Ecliptic latitude      Pioneer 10: 3°      Pioneer 11:  14°      Voyager 2: -37°      Voyager 1: 35°      New Horizons: 2°

Declination      Pioneer 10:  25° 57′      Pioneer 11:  -8° 57′      Voyager 2:  -57° 58′      Voyager 1: 12° 2′      New Horizons: -20° 28′
Right ascension      Pioneer 10:  5h 10m      Pioneer 11:  18h 52m      Voyager 2: 20h 2m      Voyager 1:  17h 15m      New Horizons: 19h 12m

    Constellation      Pioneer 10:  Taurus       Pioneer 11: Scutum        Voyager 2:  Pavo        Voyager 1:  Ophiuchus        New Horizons: Sagittarius


Distance from Earth (AU)      Pioneer 10: 124.471      Pioneer 11: 104.650      Voyager 2:  123.581      Voyager 1: 148.694      New Horizons: 47.317

 One-way light time (hours)      Pioneer 10:  17.20      Pioneer 11:  14.51      Voyager 2:  17.13      Voyager 1: 20.61      New Horizons: 6.5

    Brightness of Sun from spacecraft (Magnitude)      Pioneer 10:  -16.2      Pioneer 11:  -16.6      Voyager 2:  -16.3      Voyager 1: -15.8      New Horizons: -18.4

 Spacecraft still functioning?      Pioneer 10: no      Pioneer 11: no      Voyager 2: yes      Voyager 1: yes      New Horizons: yes
Launch Date      Pioneer 10: 1972-Mar-03      Pioneer 11: 1973-Apr-06      Voyager 2:  1977-Aug-20      Voyager 1:  1977-Sep-05      New Horizons: 2006-Jan-19We discuss the five spacecraft which are leaving the Solar System on escape trajectories – our first emissaries to the stars. On this scale, the nearest star to the Sun would be approximately 100 meters away, and it would take Voyager 1 about 70,000 years to cover that distance.
https://www.heavens-above.com/SolarEscape.aspx?lat=33.448&lng=-112.073&loc=Phoenix&alt=343&tz=Arizona
featuring Model: Caroline Longo
all photographs by Michelle Gemma
The Full Wolf Moon of January,
and Lunar Eclipse in Cancer
10 January 2020
Mystic, CT  USA

Just Like Heaven

“Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick?
The one that makes me scream.” she said
“The one that makes me laugh.” she said
And threw her arms around my neck

“Show me how you do it,
And I promise you,
I promise that
I’ll run away with you,
I’ll run away with you.”
Spinning on that dizzy edge
I kissed her face and kissed her head

And dreamed of all the different ways
I had to make her glow

“Why are you so far away?” she said,
“Why won’t you ever know
That I’m in love with you,
That I’m in love with you.”

You
Soft and only
You
Lost and lonely
You
Strange as angels

Dancing in the deepest oceans
Twisting in the water
You’re just like a dream
You’re just like a dream

Daylight licked me into shape
I must have been asleep for days
And moving lips to breathe her name
I opened up my eyes

And found myself alone alone
Alone above a raging sea
That stole the only girl I loved
And drowned her deep inside of me

You
Soft and only
You
Lost and lonely
You
Just like heaven”

featuring Model: Emma Rocherolle
as my Scorpio
from the Personal Universe series v2
v1
https://michellegemmaphotography.com/personal-universe-2/
Photographs by Michelle Gemma
Lords Point, Connecticut USA
inspired by https://www.thecure.com/lyrics/just-like-heaven/

“this is what makes us girls” https://vsco.co/emmarocherolle/images

Waiting in Sagittarius for the Last *FULL MOON* of the year and decade in Gemini

GEMINI 20
A bull stung by a scorpion.
The elaborate ritual of putting yourself through life or death crises to determine what you are made of and how far you are willing to go in this life.
Choosing from expanded faculties the optimal situations to enact this battle royale.
Selecting what is karmically familiar. Variations on old themes involving bondage and freedom.
When you are trapped, caught, stuck, a furious inner force asserts itself and can reconfigure everything. But it is a high-stakes ritual drama and loaded with real dangers.
You must check yourself out in ultimate ways, for there is surging in your blood an impulse toward liberation, which cannot be distorted in any way.
An extraordinary journey through radical tests and trails of an initiatory intensity.
It is all about guts, and stripping away everything but the true inner direction.
And if you must slay and move through illusions on every front, that is just how it is.
You cannot survive any longer on old ways to do it–it is time to welcome the enemy into your very midst and discover that there are no enemies.”
Text  by  ELLIAS LONSDALE © Copyright 2019 published on https://www.mysticmamma.com/full-moon-in-gemini-december-11th-12th-2019/

Photographs by Michelle Gemma
All clothing by Susan Hickman
Models: Caroline Walz, Liz Walz, Alycia de los Santos, Vicki Rock, and Julia Farrar.

Qui Transtulit Sustinet

“They Who Transplanted Still Sustain”

“The brand’s beleaguered design team, accustomed to a spreadsheet mentality—churn out X chinos in Y colors, repeat—were suddenly given what felt like creative carte blanche. Drexler “put the product and the design before the business, in a way,” recalls a former employee. “He made the creative drive the business.”
Drexler once told a roomful of employees that he’d passed on a hire because the candidate didn’t know the meaning or origin of her high school’s name. How could you go someplace every day and not be curious enough to figure out where the name came from? Drexler stayed five steps ahead, and for those who could keep up, the sky was the limit: invent a new product, a new category, a new business within the business. And if you can’t keep up, get the hell out of the way.”
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2019/6/j-who

“The original Fitch High School (now the former location of Fitch Middle School) was built in 1928 next to the Town Hall on Poquonnock Road, and was funded in part by the will of a local merchant, Charles Fitch, with the stipulation that it be named after his son, Robert E. Fitch. In the early 1950s, the district enrollment was larger than the school could handle. The school district decided to split to a junior high and senior high system. In 1954, the school district built a new school, the current Robert E. Fitch Senior High School, in its current location at the top of Fort Hill Road, and renamed the existing school Robert E. Fitch Junior High School.”

Notable alumni and faculty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitch_High_School

If you have not checked out the music of Samantha Urbani, I urge you to do so forthwith:  https://luckynumber.bandcamp.com/album/policies-of-power-ep