Love Me Again, the debut book by Danish photographer Michella Bredahl, showcases the beauty of intimacy through her lens. Bredahl's photographs strike a delicate balance between grandeur and reality, simultaneously honouring and dissecting the intricate interplay of self-awareness and vulnerability, love and pain, excellence and flaw, and the ordinary versus the extravagant.

The book features a collection of Bredahl's portraits spanning the last decade. This prolonged timeline reflects her commitment to developing deep, ongoing relationships with her subjects, contrasting with her own experiences as a model.

Growing up in the Høje Glasaxe Vulnerable Residential Area near Copenhagen, Bredahl entered the world of modelling at fourteen. She later described this period as a time of lost identity, which influenced her to prioritise collaborative relationships in her photography. Bredahl emphasises the importance of communication and trust in creating compelling narratives, viewing her subjects as an extended family.

The book’s cover depicts actor and close friend, Vic Carmen Sonne. Of this photograph, Bredahl reflected on the remnants of herself that emerged: “When I see it, it doesn’t only feel like a picture of Vic. It feels like a picture of me too.” Sonne’s eyes blades through the camera lens, piercing both Bredahl and her onlookers. The image is, again, both self-aware and vulnerable. There is a mutuality between photographer and subject that is rare in portraiture.

Bredahl’s work is often likened to the New York flâneuse Nan Goldin. In the book’s introduction, author Stephanie LaCava recalls Bredahl photographing her at L’Hotel in Paris, a favorite location of Goldin's. Both artists share an affinity for exploring tension and revealing their subjects in moments of vulnerability.

Unguarded and erotic, Bredahl’s work captures women in vulnerable environments and sexualised spaces, curated postures and unposed states. LaCava reflects on her own experience of being photographed. She shares, “I was in a shaky place […] shifts were happening in my personal and public life, which should have led me to decline this kind of portraiture”.

The resulting photograph captures LaCava in a moment of grace and uncertainty. She is seen in motion with bounds of hair appear mid-swept; her black lace cat suit wistfully reflecting in the mirror. In the photo LaCava possesses an impenetrable decadence. Even Bredahl writes, “Even after photographing her I am still left with a feeling of having come very close but still not revealing what lies within those deep thoughts of hers”.

Love Me Again peers into the domestic, sexualised, ritualised and tedious moments of life. In the way Nan Goldin sought to unveil the counter-cultural people of New York, Bredahl uncovers the depths of femininity, extending the legacy of Goldin’s exploration of personal identity through photography.

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