“So Much Inside of Me Broke at That Very Moment”

Selina is a lesbian woman living in Bern. She grew up in the small village of Lauenen, close to Gstaad. When she was 21, the father of the girl she was seeing attacked and tried to kill her, and later incited the village against her family: "Keep your girls inside, there's a lesbian plague going around," his message was.

He copied the love letters Selina sent to his daughter and distributed them in the village; Selina’s sister was almost run over by a car. For a while, their father slept with a gun by his side. The family broke up; Selina became suicidal. She needed many years to recover from these events.

 

I’m so very happy she decided to talk to me about her life for my book project on lesbian lives. I interviewed and photographed her recently at her home and in Lauenen.