Stephanie LaCava and Michella Bredahl on art and ‘messy’ womanhood

Friendships can feel as intoxicating as romances. The heady, exhilarating sensation of meeting someone new with whom you feel an affinity, the recognition and intimacy of those early exchanges and meetings. The sense of being drawn into another person’s secret life and revealing your own secrets to them in turn is my favourite way to feel. I’d almost take it over a love affair. As Eve Babitz once wrote in Slow Days, Fast Company, “I had a collection of lovers to keep me warm and my friendships with women, who always fascinated me by their wit, bravery, and resourcefulness, and who never told you the same story twice.” And when this experience is amplified by a reciprocal creative exchange of any kind, it can be even more energising. 

Two such friends are photographer Michella Bredahl and the writer Stephanie LaCava, who, despite living in different continents – Bredahl is based in Paris and LaCava lives in New York – struck up what has evolved into an enriching friendship after the photographer saw an arresting picture of LaCava in latex stockings and jean shorts and thought, ‘Who is this person? I want to know her.’ 

LaCava’s latest novel, Nymph, presents a portrait of Bathory, a young woman trying to understand herself in real time while navigating an unconventional career path as a model, sex worker, linguist, Latin scholar, and assassin. The New York-based writer seems compelled by women’s interior lives; her stories plumb the fathomless psychosexual depths of her fascinating heroines. Like her previous much-loved book, I Feel My Pain Interests You, her new work is a close, cool look at the moments that define us – often fleeting, often uncomfortable – and the ways we learn to inhabit our own bodies and histories. 

Bredahl is similarly drawn to the lives and experiences of women, portraying close friends, dancers and family in private, interior spaces. In her current exhibition, Rooms We Made Safe (Huis Marseille, Amsterdam) – her first museum exhibition – she shares the walls with her mother, displaying photographs from their family archive that initiate a complex and courageous conversation about her mother’s struggles with addiction and the messier parts of family life, all interwoven with moments of love, colour, and tenderness.

In the wake of the launch of LaCava’s Nymph and Bredahl’s photo book Rooms We Made Safe (in which LaCava contributes the text, Fixed Image), the friends sat down to chat and contemplate their relationship, their individual creative practices, and collaboration.

Michella Bredahl: I remember seeing this image of you wearing leather stockings and jean shorts. It led me first to seeing your book, I Feel My Pain Interests You. That was back in January 2022. From there, I reached out to you and we started having a conversation, texting. We started talking about me taking your portrait when you came to Paris. So, we met through images and writing before we actually met in person.

Stephanie LaCava: I remember telling you, ‘I love your work, as well,’ which led to our early collaboration. It’s been an amazing friendship that’s enlarged both our universes. I love that we originally connected through an online image, which allowed us to start making stuff together. 

Michella Bredahl: That’s what's so interesting about being someone who creates things. What you’re actually doing is creating a language or feeling of belonging; you’re attracting, putting something out there.

Stephanie LaCava: Or maybe repelling. But that’s helpful in its own way, right? 

Michella Bredahl: When I was in film school, we were taught to only make films with the people you want to dance with. It’s something that always stayed with me. I think there’s some proof in that; it’s why we’re here now. And I’m curious, because I’ve been experimenting with writing as well, how does writing a book start for you? Is it a sentence? An image? Do you collect things in a folder? Were you already writing Nymph when we met two and a half years ago?

Stephanie LaCava: I think so, but it wasn’t always called Nymph. For me, it’s about collecting, not literally, but more in spirit. I’m coming up with what the thing is going to be over a few years, and then the story is quickly put down. There’s not one open document or a chart on the wall. It’s what disappears too. Photography is also about absence, right? When you make an image, it’s not just what you see, it‘s what's left out, as well. 

Both of us make work about people who feel unsafe a lot of the time. I love that we can create work together... because we feel safe with each other – Stephanie LaCava

Michella Bredahl: I actually thought of something when you said the word ‘absence’. I read a piece recently, which discussed absence linked to trauma – that it’s often the hand that wasn’t there, or the love that wasn’t there, that takes up a lot of space. In image-making, how do you talk about these things? How do you capture the things that are hard to talk about?  When I took that original photograph of you, I think it captured a difficult duality. This push and pull between a desire for intimacy and detachment is also in your writing.  

Stephanie LaCava: That’s so true. When you photograph me, I feel at ease with you. That’s a credit to you and our connection. Both of us make work about people who feel unsafe a lot of the time. I love that we can create work together, sometimes even about each other’s work, because we feel safe with each other.

Michella Bredahl: That’s beautiful, yes. 

Stephanie LaCava:  So much of our respective work is about lack of trust and betrayal, and then somehow we come together and make these things as a function of trust.  By the way, I love the essay you wrote for your own book that just came out! You could have easily been a writer. What drew you to photography as your primary medium? 

Michella Bredahl: That was because my mum gave me a camera when I was seven. My mum loved photography. When I look at our family album, there is a moment when it changes from me being in front of the camera to me taking images of my mum and my sister. Since then, I’ve never let go of the camera. Then I was introduced to Diane Arbus. I saw her work, and that was one of the first times I remember a feeling of ‘what is this?’ That led me to take a photography course, and so on.

Stephanie LaCava: We both got pushed to what was available to us as solace when we were young. I read everything. I didn’t have a camera or someone pushing me in that direction. We use the tools we have. I read a lot of books, and first started writing poetry. So much of my work is about invisibility and absence, but also the desire for visibility alongside the wish to disappear. These duelling things kind of brought us together.  

Michella Bredahl: When I was younger, people expected me to be a model. But really, I wanted to be behind the camera, not in front. I felt like the inner and outer parts of me got further and further apart, until I discovered Diane’s book. Growing up without artists in my life, I found inspiration in their books. With you, there’s this mirror between us, a way of speaking the same language, even when our actual languages differ.

Stephanie LaCava: Nymph is all about linguistics and codes – how messages are sent and received, or missed entirely. 

Michella Bredahl: Some people are so complex, contradictory, full of secrets and contradictions, impossible to put in a box. I see that in your writing, and it’s in that first portrait I took of you: fragility, sensuality, but also strength.

Stephanie LaCava: It’s a difficult line to walk. Part of the magic in our friendship is being able to hold and play with all these contrasts, and not have to choose between them.

Whether photos or books, it’s about storytelling, showing the real stories of women and not shying away from the messy, layered truth – Michella Bredahl

Michella Bredahl: Yes, and you actually advocate for embracing those contradictions – fragility and sensuality as powers rather than weaknesses. Whether photos or books, it’s about storytelling, showing the real stories of women and not shying away from the messy, layered truth.

Stephanie LaCava: You’re good with allowing people to show themselves without judgment – through space and colour, as well. Your photography often captures this intimacy in domestic spaces.

Michella Bredahl: Growing up, my mother painted each room a different colour, so colour and intimacy became central to how I photograph. It’s not about sterile studios, but about entering someone’s room, their life. That’s where the real story is. I’ve been meaning to ask you: When do you know something you’re writing is finished?

Stephanie LaCava: For me, it’s intuition. I just know. If I ever deliver something before it feels right, I regret it. Is it the same for you with images?

Michella Bredahl: Sort of. With photographs, there’s always the sense you could keep changing things. A book feels more final?

Stephanie LaCava: That’s funny. I didn’t think of this before, but the last scene of Nymph is its own kind of never-ending story.