︎

Noemi Ehrat

Freelance journalist/photographer based in Hanover/Zurich.

Portraits (selection)

Artist Guðbjörg Lind Jónsdóttir in her studio in Reykjavík, October 2023

Tattoo artist Livia in her studio in Bern, January 2022

Miscellany

Director Joséphine Demerliac for Filmbulletin, June 2023

Safe Access: Abortion Clinic in Dortmund

In November 2022, Dutch doctor Gabie Raven opened an abortion clinic in Dortmund. She already runs two such clinics in the Netherlands. She chose her new location because many German women used to travel to her clinic in Roermond, close to the German-Dutch border, to undergo the procedure – which is much more costly, as it is not covered by German health insurance programmes. In Dortmund, receiving hate mail and threatening phone calls is part of her daily life at work. Sometimes, anti-abortionists travel to the city to protest in front of the clinic. However, for Gabie, abortion is simply part of reproductive health. This is why her team takes care of questions surrounding contraception, too, informing their patiens about intrauterine devices, vasectomies, etc. Some of her patients were refused to have an abortion by their gynecologist. In Gabie‘s clinic, her and her team cares for these women, too.

Bronies: A Visit to the My-Littly-Pony-Fandom

When speaking about fandoms, most people think of “Trekkies”, “Ringers”, or “Potterheads”. However, there’s also a niche group called “Bronies”, the term deriving from the words “Bro” and “pony”. The group mostly consists of men in their thirties and they have regular meet-ups, conventions and other events where they discuss their favourite kid’s tv show. Quite often, they bring along their soft-toys, representing their favourite characters from the show. Photos and text done on assignment for Filmbulletin.

Before Eviction: Kochareal in Zurich

The Kochareal in Zurich was one of the city’s biggest and longest-living squats before it was evicted in February 2023. The community ran a cinema, a bike workshop and organised concerts, which made the place into a vibrant centre for the city’s cultural scene. Over a hundred people lived on the 300’000 quare metre large area, including children. I captured the last moments in the squat before its eviction and spent time talking to the squatters about their plans for the future. As squatting is illegal, all portraits had to be anonymised. I used headlines from Swiss newspaper articles that dealt with the topic, as most of the reporting had negative connotations and influenced the population‘s perception of the squatters as violent, unemployed people. For these reasons, the portraits are not depicted here.

Read more about the story here.

Horseboys of Dublin

Horses have always played an important part in Irish culture and life. Even to this day, there are families keeping their horses and ponies in transformed car garages right in Dublin’s city centre, next to the busy main streets. While these families use the horses to offer tourist carriage tours during the day, they also care for their animals and take them out to groom them and to play with them in their spare time. However, this way of life is more and more threatened by local politicians and foreign investors who want to build new buildings in the city centre. Thus, it remains to be seen how long the men and their horses will remain a feature of Dublin‘s cityscape.