Outside the Mainstream - Mandi Lynn, midwife of vixens

Mandi Lynn’s business card says it all: “Midwife of hidden dreams … prone towards cannonballs when near bodies of water … elicitor of vixen-like behaviour”. Meet her and you know the card speaks the truth.

As any business card should, it also says what she does for a living. Mandi is a photographer – not so much of hamburgers or landscapes, but of people, fashion, faces, lives. Based in Petone, in a flushed-pink studio called A La Mode, Mandi is in her element photographing women. “I’ve had many careers already,” says the 39-year-old former American-turned-Wellingtonian. “I’ve been an obstetrical nurse in the US Navy, a lactation consultant, an organic blueberry grower, and now photographer – which has always been my dream.”

It may read like an incongruous list of occupations, but for Mandi, not really. Now she’s in full-flight ‘artist Mandi’, but back then she was ‘practical Mandi’. “In high school I was on a track to be a professional cellist, and was painting all the time. But someone told me most artists starved, so liking my food the way I did I joined the military instead. More to the point, my family couldn’t afford university and I knew the navy would pay for tuition after service, so I enlisted.”

After boot camp, Mandi was offered a role as an electronics technician, and was trained to fix satellite communication systems. Excelling at that, she could then choose to be a pilot or a nurse. “My ego said ‘pilot, pilot, pilot!’, but my heart said ‘nurse’, so I followed my heart. I don’t think my spirit was meant to hold the responsibility of possibly killing someone, so I chose to be involved in delivering life instead. I specialised in high-risk obstetrical nursing, and I loved it absolutely.”

Putting aside her artistic passions, Mandi worked as a nurse and then a lactation consultant. On moving to Wellington in 2001 with then husband David and young son Sam, she fell in love with an organic blueberry farm in the Akatarawa Valley. This became her new home and passion, and ‘earth mother Mandi’ was born, the mistress of 3000 blueberry bushes, countless chooks, exotic ducks and an oversized German shepherd.

It was a steep learning curve – Mandi had only a few failed vege patches on her record. But with her usual drive and passion she made it work, doing all she could to ensure that people who came to pick the fruit took home knowledge about living sustainably as well as their paper bag of blueberries.

Although she loved her time on the farm, when Mandi’s marriage broke up she found the artist in her demanding attention. Realising that photography gave her real joy, Mandi turned her attention back to art – and to her feminine side. “[On the farm] I wore crocs, not heels,” she says. “Now I’m trying out my femininity and how my art works with that. And it’s funny, because about 80 percent of my work is fashion-focused.” Mandi’s fashion work has been so successful Vogue Italia accepted her portfolio for its website.

Mandi’s favourite subjects, however, are not models but ordinary women – women who have signed up for her ‘Pin Up’ photo sessions to see what it feels like to be a model for a day.

“I love shooting women in their 40s to 60s in particular. They’re so confident, with so much sass. I love it when, during a shoot, I see that woman unfold, and her inner goddess comes out. When I stopped working with new mothers, I felt a bit guilty. Then I realised I am still helping, healing and supporting women by showing them how beautiful they are, inside and out.”

The road from navy electrician, to nurse, to lactation consultant, to organic blueberry farmer, to fashion photographer may not exactly be linear, but for Mandi they’re all related. “The navy shaped me into being the determined person I am today, but I am still able to follow my heart. In business, I don’t look before I leap, but I know if I love what I want to do – like photography – and I do leap, I’ll land on my feet.”

And she certainly has. This midwife of dreams has given birth to her own dream – and it’s thriving.

[Photograph Caption: Mandi Lynn – midwife of hidden dreams.]