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She is looking at all of us: friends, lovers, chosen family in pictures | Art and design

‘She is looking at all of us’: friends, lovers, chosen family – in pictures

Danish photographer Michella Bredahl’s intimate, tender portraits of those closest to her are a response to her turbulent upbringing

@mlestone Main image: ‘It feels like a picture of me too’ … Michella Bredahl shoots Vic in an apartment in Paris, 2022. Photograph: Michella Bredahl

Tue 14 Nov 2023 07.00 GMT Last modified on Thu 16 Nov 2023 21.53 GMT

  • Klara sleeping with Bobbie in an Parisian apartment, 2022

    How do we create safety and empathy through the act of portraiture? Michella Bredahl explores feminine energy through a decade of intimate portraits of friends and acquaintances. Of this image she says: ‘A few days after Klara’s birthday, the balloons were still full of air, lying all around the apartment. Klara is wearing my green dress. I have been photographing Klara for seven years. This was the first time photographing her as a mother’ Michella Bredahl’s Love Me Again is published by Loose Joints. All photographs: Michella Bredahl

  • Young love in their room, 2012

    Raised in a turbulent home environment within the Høje Gladsaxe vulnerable residential area outside Copenhagen, the artist eventually found herself before the camera, scouted as a model at a tender age: objectified, gazed upon, subjected to the whims of men and power. Of becoming a photographer she says: ‘I was in art school. We finished and my friend got pregnant. I had just got a new camera and took some of my first portraits of her and her boyfriend on it. I discovered the pictures again around the same time I started working on the book’

  • Rosa in my room, 2021

    Like the lineage of influential female photographic portraitists before her – Goldin, Day, Sarfati and Lawson, to name a few – Bredahl’s portraits arise from a place of introspection and self-scrutiny, finding the missing parts of herself in the arrested gazes, languid poses and intimate spaces of others. ‘It’s winter,’ she says of this image. ‘Rosa is wearing my red robe. I had just moved to Paris. We had been working on a film in Denmark’

  • Vic in an apartment in Paris, 2022

    ‘Vic was in Paris, because her film Godland was premiering at Cannes. She is an incredible actress. I met Vic years ago on a film set, where I photographed her in a bathroom, dancing. We became very close friends. Not only friends. I draw inspiration from her. Here she is lying looking at me, but also looking at all of us. This picture means a lot to me. When I see it, it doesn’t only feel like a picture of Vic. It feels like a picture of me too’

  • Ash and Lara in a hotel, 2023

    Love Me Again is an exercise in taking power back, by locating the essence of femininity alongside sexuality, safety, and the plain unfiltered reality of her subjects. ‘Ash brought Lara to my birthday,’ says Bredahl. ‘They didn’t stop kissing the whole night. I wanted to take their portrait for this book. We went on a trip, all three together to Marseille, and I photographed them kissing in our hotel room’

  • Fatou in a hotel in Paris, 2023

    ‘Fatou walks into a room and you can’t help look at her. She is just beautiful. She has such elegance and still there is this fire of sensuality. I’d been wanting to capture this duality of hers. I photographed her together with artist Akeem Smith, who put her in this beautiful dress. She didn’t have to do much. That’s the thing with Fatou. Her presence just speaks’

  • Jem in New York, 2019

    ‘Jem told me after this picture was taken: “I want to say it looks like a literal painting. I would love to print it out and frame it when I have a big enough wall. Thank you for showing me the beauty of vulnerability.” This photo means a lot to me. It was a fundamental artistic piece that speaks to a very healing time of my life’

  • Tonia and Clive in their mother’s bedroom, 2019

    Bredahl burrows into the safety of the home, showing people at their most relaxed, their most languid, their most natural. ‘It’s summer. This was the first time I was invited to Tonia’s home. I met her whole family. Her younger brother was lying on the sofa and watching TV just before and wanted to be part of the portrait. I love the yellow and green duvet on the bed. It reminded me of my own mother’s bedroom’

  • Tyi in a barthroom, 2021

    ‘It was springtime in Paris. Tyi was staying with an art critic in her apartment. She told me to come around and show the woman my pictures. She also wanted to show me the apartment, because it was like art in itself. We took her portrait here in the bathroom. The bathtub is an intimate place. It’s almost like a sanctuary’

  • Sybilla in her room, 2015

    ‘Sybilla and I applied to film school together. She got in and I didn’t ... well, not until two years later. She is one of the first people I started photographing regularly. We were very young. I didn’t always know what I was doing. She had so much patience with me. She let me stay around with my camera at her place. She had a specific vulnerability. It’s as if there was always a tear in her eye’

  • Leah in a garden, 2023

    ‘I told Leah that the book is out and showed her the portrait of her again. She texted me: “Oh how I want to hug that girl in the picture and thank her for how far we have come”’

  • Isis and Billie in Paris, 2021

    ‘There is always something about youth that captures me and the access I am being given. It’s a really pure and honest access. It’s a mirror I would like to use to remind us all of where we come from’

  • Manali in her room, 2021

    ‘I have been photographing Manali and her older sister Billie for a little over a year. This picture is one of my favourites of Manali. The way she looks up it’s as if she is outside looking at the sky. The wave in the background reminds me of the force in youth. The little teddy next to her. That’s what it felt like to be a teenager, always overwhelming though still soft and beautiful’

  • Siblings Martha, Alma, Olga, Ida and Asta in their room, 2023

    ‘Last year I was giving a portfolio review at the photography school I used to study at. Alma, who was a student there, presented me her pictures. There was something incredibly sensitive about her. She showed me her portrait of her four siblings. They all had the same incredible sensitivity in their eyes. I asked to take their portrait all together in their home’

  • Ash in Vivi’s bedroom in Christiania, 2021

    ‘Every time I am back in Denmark I go visit Christiania. It’s a freetown. A sort of commune. I invited my friend Ash to come and visit me, while I was living there. We took this picture in Vivi’s bedroom. It was like magic unfolding in front of my eyes. When I’m with Ash and I have the camera, it’s like we can create our own world anywhere’
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