Sendb00ks in conversation with February Artist Michella Bredahl

SB

Hello Michella and welcome to Sendb00ks. It's been so great working with you this month. Let's start with the question every artist is being asked at the moment. Have you found the lockdown to be helpful or detrimental to your creativity?

MB

Hello, I would say both! I appreciate time a lot more now, so when I go out to meet people, I feel a stronger connection with them. In Paris, there is a 6pm curfew which can be really frustrating. A few weeks ago I was working on a film outside and it was really stressful to take into consideration that everything around us would close at six. Even the convenience stores. You don’t want to be thinking about shopping, you just want to be immersed in what you are doing and then switch off and buy something on the way home at eleven. It is these small freedoms that I didn't pay too much attention to before but am now really missing. 
But saying that, the lockdown has made me more organized which I like. At Christmas I went back home and looked through a lot of old pictures I took of my Mum when I was a teenager. Some of the first portraits I ever took were of her. I could see a lot of similarities in those pictures with the ones I take today that I'd never noticed before and I recently decided to publish it. I think this time has made me look at my pictures with a new depth. I have always felt my pictures were sort of a diary, but I think there is a lot more to it than that, which I am enjoying discovering.

SB

That's so great you managed to get home, especially as this Christmas was so weird for so many people. Talking of home, can you describe your room and how your feelings towards it have changed over the lockdown? 

MB

I am fortunate to have my equipment so I can work on my pictures. I am independent, I have an internet connection and was able to access funding that has helped me get by. I don’t have lots of children or have to spend my time looking after a man. Like Virginia Woolf said herself: “I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.” I have a lot of work from other artists in my room. It gives me a lot of energy and peace to surround me with other artists, especially female ones.  From my desk on my right I have a painting and books of female photographers that I love like Vivian Maier, Sally Mann, Mary Ellen Mark, and a little painting of my friend’s son too. There are some postcards and printed pictures of people I care for up against the wall. And of course a lot of books.

I moved to a house in Montreuil just outside Paris six months ago. The first confinement happened soon after I arrived. For me it felt so strange that someone could suddenly take away my freedom to walk outside. I still have those feelings about it today. I don't think it’s  healthy to be so separate from nature, it brings people together. I feel that we have moved further and further away from nature, and I don't like this.  I have a little studio with a kitchen and a bathroom. This really feels like home for me. It gives me a feeling of coming home every time I walk into my room. During this period I feel more grateful than ever to have a space I feel comfortable in, and where I can close my door and feel creative. I often think about what effect poverty and wealth has on my mind in relation to my space, and the lockdown has amplified this issue for so many.

SB

That's what we like to hear. In all the pictures we have of you in your room there are piles of beautiful books, can you tell us about some of your favourites that you keep here?

MB

Giovanni's  Room by James Baldwin and Out of Africa by Karen Blixen are two really important books to me. As well as The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I read it recently and it touched me very deeply. My Mother Laughs by Chantal Akerman is another special book that's never too far from hand. All my books are like treasures to me. I feel very connected to them all. I could never lend them out. They feel like parts of me. Every book I read I keep notes for. I go back and look in them sometimes and reread what I wrote.

SB

I’m very jealous of that. We always talk about taking more notes as we never do and forget everything. Are you missing Denmark or are you enjoying Lockdown in France?

MB

The light is really beautiful in my room so I am very happy here. The light in Denmark is not like the light in France. It falls in through my window like it wants to bless me. There are a lot of sounds from the streets coming into my room. Scooters, footsteps, people talking. And just from listening to it, you can hear what time of day it is. In the morning there is always a dog barking, cars passing, and by the end of the night the noises have changed completely. It is very quiet and you can always hear someone speaking bambara. There is a building at the end of my street where only Malians live and at night they all spill into the street with these magical words I don’t understand. I recently learned the differences between ‘ecouter’ (to listen) and ‘entendre’ (to hear). ‘Ecouter’ is active and ‘entendre’ is inactive. You choose to listen, you don't choose to hear. It is sounds that come to you. This is another reason why I like to be in France. I feel like I learn and hear a lot of new words and sounds every day. I like to spend time in my room though too, even now that I am forced too.

SB

Your work centres around the close study of people in such a remarkable and intimate way.  Have your feelings of connection to those around you changed over the course of the pandemic?

MB

Yes, a lot. There are a lot of people I haven’t been able to see and photograph for a long time. This has been really hard for me. I have been really worried for some of my friends that have been sick. My work is so entangled in my life. My pictures are people I love and my friends. Sometimes it is also someone I met on the street, but most of the time this turns into a deeper relationship, because I like to return to my subjects. A lot of people I have photographed are still deeply connected to my life. I like to capture special moments in time. It allows me to share them and remember them with those that were there. This has been made much more difficult for me now because I haven’t been able to move around like before.

SB

It’s been tough for sure, everyone has had to tap back into old hobbies to stay sane. Aside from photography do you have any other creative outlets or hobbies that have helped you over the last year?

MB

I love to dance. I like to go to nightclubs, which I’m missing,  and I practice pole-dancing. I watch a lot of films. I like old films. Luis Bunuel, Chantal Akerman, Barbara Loden, Jean Vigo, and Fassbinder. I admire actresses like Delphine Seyrig. This era had a charm and a way to make cinema that I don’t feel exists anymore. I like the works of Claire Denis. I recently watched J’ai pas de Sommeil. I often film scenes in films I like on my phone and then I watch it again and again. Like the scene where Richard Courcet dances in the nightclub to Le lien défaitby Jean Louis Murat. These moments I really treasure in cinema. 

I have a degree in film directing and I made several short films, but making films takes a lot of work from me. I still need to refine it. I am very critical of my films. I feel I never come anywhere near the movies I admire. I definitely don’t feel as comfortable with directing films as I do with photography. The camera is like a third hand that I was born with as a baby. It feels so natural for me to photograph. I feel so deeply connected to my camera that it is always weird giving it to someone else. It’s like taking my voice from me or my eyes. I also use my phone a lot everyday as a means of creating. I post small videos on my stories. I find it so beautiful how people dress and move and walk around in their own world. It’s like being in a cinema for me to take the metro and walk around the streets in Paris, even though now there are a lot less people.

SB

This month we worked with you to produce a response to Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. What was your initial reaction to her writing? 

MB

I first read Virgina Woolf’s diaries and they made such a strong impression on me.  They are reflections on her works, her process, reviews and other people's opinions about her work. This was really inspiring to me. After this I started to keep a similar record on my work.  She was so deep in her work and she was so sensitive to what others thought of it. I feel you could really tell through her writing how much this tormented her, but it made her write like crazy. She wanted to show the world that she was good enough, especially other successful male writers from her time. She had such a sense of grandeur about herself yet she was terribly insecure and troubled at the same time. If only she would have known that she would be one of the most important female voices of all time. 
I connect a lot with broken hearts and sensitive people, which is what I first loved about Virginia's writing. I feel that very sensitive people are very creative. I am a Pisces, a water sign. In astrology water represents emotion. I am full of emotions like Virginia was. I am very imaginative and dreamy. I also like to escape from the simple chores of everyday life. When I read Virginia's work I thought to myself, she must have been a Pisces. She was extremely tortured but she found so much strength and solace in her work and her belief in her own voice. I find a lot of peace through my work now that I have found my craft. If you are a very sensitive human being, I think you easily get tempted and can get on the wrong side of the road. I am very protective of my energy, because I know that I get easily carried away with my emotions. For example I don’t drink alcohol or smoke. I make an effort to canalize my energy into my work.

SB

A Room of One’s Own was written almost one hundred years ago yet its messages are eerily applicable to life in 2021. I know we have spoken about how strongly you felt this whilst reading the book, can you elaborate on that?

MB

Today in this part of the world women have more privileges than ever. Obviously there is such a long way to go but there are still other groups of people who are suffering inequality and injustice on such a huge scale. I believe her messages of inclusion are longer applicable only to the subject of sex and gender, but now has to do with race and nationality. I photographed a mum near Gambetta from Nigeria who shared a one room apartment with her three kids. She was working as a cleaning lady during the day and sleeping on the couch at night. The kids were sharing three bunks beds. If she wanted to write poetry or if one of her kids were great at singing, how would she provide access for them to practice their skills? How would she find time to practice her own gifts? Women were not writing poetry in the Elizabethan age because they had no sitting-rooms, they had no money, and they had many children. Today a lot more women from my part of the world are able to take care of themselves. There are still a lot of other groups of people, which also pertains to men, who don't have the same privileges I have. Now there are more hierarchies among people on the basis of their income and nationality. I know that my privilege is borne on the shoulders of other people. We are still so far away from having the same opportunities. Everyday this flushes me with anger watching how we are segregated by class and wealth and race, not just gender. 

SB

Which aspects of Virginia’s life or her writing resonate most with you? 

MB

There were so many similarities between her and myself. I am very romantic. It can never get romantic enough. I want the comfort and the unknown at the same time. I am always in love with someone new. I am never settled. I recognise the restlessness in her and how it probably came from a deep pain. A pain that I resonate with. 
I also resonate with a lot of the stuff that Virginia Woolf says about having a need to create. I come from a poor upbringing. I had no access to books or art during my childhood but I had the desire to find these things on my own. My dad would always ask me, how are you going to make money? Why don’t you want to be a lawyer? The first time I watched a Truffaut film I was twenty one years old. I wasn’t married with three kids. I have had my twenties to concentrate on my work and  now I have my thirties to build a family at my own pace. At the Danish film school I attended they only took six students every second year. There were more women than men in my class and many of them had kids while studying. They would bring the baby to class. 
I think it is really important to listen to that voice inside you and follow it, no matter what is considered to be normal. And I think that's what Virginia was really trying to say with this book, that you need to carve out your own spaces. Not just women but people from oppressed groups whose voices and rights have long been sacrificed all over the world. Things are here to be changed. Something is only normal until it is not. When you create you often take the roads alone and that is frightening. But it is only those who dare to open the doors that will see what is behind them. For too long women were taught not to open that door, because we were believed to be inferior to men. But now it's time to open all the doors. More and more women are now successful creatively, just like Virginia had hoped over one hundred years ago. We don't settle anymore with what we are told.

SB

Amazing. Thank you so much Michella!

Interview by Katie Brown
Photographs by Gemma Janes