Birthe’s World
A self portrait by Birthe Havmoeller, independent editor of Feminine Moments
Recently one of my readers realized that I am not based in Copenhagen, but am living in a village near Aarhus, she asked: Do you live in the country? Is it peaceful there? It is a town? … and I realized that many of the returning visitors of Feminine Moments may have similar questions, wondering about who Birthe, your lovely editor of Feminine Moments is? – so now I’ll give you a tour of Birthes world.
Self portrait by Birthe Havmoeller, May 2013
A Guided Tour of Birthe’s World
Birthe Havmoeller (b.1962): I live in the village of Trige (12 km) north of Aarhus in Jutland, Denmark. I am a single gay woman. My home is a small ground floor flat – 2 rooms, with an unheated conservatory and my own small garden(!) in a two story apartment building owned by a local housing association. My street (Trige Parkvej in Trige) is a series of buildings with playgrounds and gardens/ lawns between the buildings. It is a very peaceful place next to yellow raps fields about 1.5 km from the E45 i.e. the motorway from Hamburg, Germany to Oslo, Norway, going through Jutland. My street and the next one are among the cheapest places to rent an apartment near Aarhus, Denmark’s second biggest city. Last year this my neighborhood was officially labeled a “ghetto”, because of it being a community with a high number of immigrants (predominantly people from Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Turkey and a few other Arab countries) and the fact that many people are receiving social benefits here, – including me as I haven’t got a regular job at the moment. To me it is a nice mixed community of black and white people.
The summer office of Feminine Moments
Feminine Moments 2003 – 2013
In November 2013 the site of www.femininemoments.dk will be 10 years. Feminine Moments materialized out of an old dream (from 1994) about getting know queer feminist artists (=my colleagues) and their art projects. In 2003 I launched Feminine Moments as a resource site with a bibliography and a collection of lesbian fine art links. In 2007-2008 the time was right for me to develop the site by adding the art blog and I started promoting out an proud art made by lesbian, bisexual and queer women artists at the site.
The photo above is taken in my conservatory, which I am using as the summer office of Feminine Moments, This is where I update Feminine Moments and write the monthly newsletter. I do not use my conservatory as a greenhouse as any plants in my home will just die, when I go camping a few weeks each summer to make my landscape photos or go ‘treasure hunting’ for fossils along the beaches in Denmark, Sweden or England.
Slow Photography / Work in Progress
I am a fine art photographer and I am in love with Nature. In 2014 it will be 25 years(!) since I presented my first photos at a censored exhibition in Aarhus. Each spring for a number of years I have been working on a flower photography project.
White Cherry Blossoms, panorama by Birthe Havmoeller, 2010
Each year in the month of May I have a small window of 2-4 days in which I return to my favorite trees to make more photos of cherry blossoms. – Last weekend I was snapping romantic photos of the white cherry blossoms until my shoulders started aching.
This summer I also hope to add more triptychs to my series ‘Obscure Places’. This is a series of b/w panoramas of places and spaces where the physical and the emotional – land and sea – meet. It is a long-term project, which I have been working on for more than 10 years.
Leading Lady Birthe Havmoeller
A story about me and my life as a lesbian artist and an activist would not be complete without me telling you about my latest passion: Tango Argentino. I am spending a couple of evening each week dancing tango as the only queer dancer of the local small (heteronormative) tango community of about 150 persons in Aarhus. I love the way this sensual dance challenges my musicality, and the insights which opens up, when I improvise and co-create an Argentine Tango with a casual dance partner. For the last couple of years I have attended the International Queer Tango Festival in Berlin and I have started writing articles about Queer Tango / Tango with open roles. See for example my article Queer Tango and the ephemeral abrazo.