Vixtoria Salomonsen

It was twelve in the night in August, and I was out for a walk. I just moved to Den Haag.

I approached a shop where lights were on, this late. Music was playing, loud techno beats and I could hear birds chirping. Curiously I looked inside and there she was – Lola. With a joint in her hand, wild eyes, and a young heart in this mess of colors, birds, and clothes. With her own opening hours, working at night, sleeping late in the morning and with so much beauty around her. Beauty that I got to be a part of for four years.

Beauty as an impressive presence and an appearance that defies whatever presumptions people might have about the look of a woman in her sixties, she is the queen of her empire. Fourteen colorful birds are cruising in the air in her own space and paradise where she shares all the treasures of clothes and glittering objects that she has carefully collected over the years.

As we started with me pointing my camera to her in the film "My First Home", I started to enter slowly, as she points the camera to me. The images we have made are becoming an extension of us, that is now becoming a book - "Your Eyes”.

Through photographs, drawings, and texts a coming-of-age love story seeing beauty, mirroring, and finding a role model in each other is taking shape. Photographed with care and embracing each other’s characters with patience. Lola is learning to see herself, but she is also gazing back, photographing, allowing me to see myself.