CLARA BENADOR
photographed by
Juliette Lambard
Who’s Clara Benador?
Someone I haven’t met yet.
What’s your first memory?
Probably my very first trip to New York with my father, when I was around four years old. It really changed something in my childhood. I saw this enormous city, full of lights, temptations and glory. I guess that made me think about the fictional space you can create in your mind. After coming back I was obsessed. So I believe I really changed the trip in my head to make it into a fictional story. I am talking about it in a longer text I started a while ago.
What’s the best thing about being you? What’s the worst?
The best is, I don’t really know which character I have changed into when I wake up every day, which can also be the worst.
If you could switch bodies with someone for 24 hours, whose would it be?
A cat’s in order to scratch for real and to disappear with no phone to be found.
What superpower do you wish you had?
The power to be able to live every night (meaning being accepted like that) and to sleep during the day. Unfortunately, real life always gets me in the end… and I need to survive a little bit and have a job sometimes!
What’s your favorite David Lynch movie?
Blue Velvet.
Nouvelle Vague or Vogue Italia?
Nouvelle Vague.
What’s your favorite love poem?
Louis Aragon – Les yeux d’Elsa.
Georges Batailles – l’Érotisme (A book can also be a poem, right?)
The art of losing isn’t hard to master? (Elisabeth Bishop)
Starting being a loser is the best way to win.
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind? (William Shakespeare)
Finally a true friend!!
There is no friend as loyal as a book? (Ernest Hemingway)
I would say it’s a bit of a problem for me. My books are most loyal friends, and I formed the bad habit of obsessing with the subjects of research and books that help me to write. Every time I search something, I end up buying many of them so they can stay with me. I have an abundance of books at home now and when I travel I prefer to take a bag filled with books rather than clothes. No wrong answer that’s my first thought. On second thought party outfits cross my mind. Then I have to pack another suitcase for my dresses and glitter. What’s wrong with it? No clue. I always travel very lightly… haha.
White wine or absinthe?
I never tried absinthe. Picasso’s Absinthe Drinker is stuck in my mind as a main childhood memory, weird right?
Do you often go to Père Lachaise cemetery to visit Jim Morrison’s grave?
I would rather meet him at the next whisky bar!
Sexy Eiffel Tower? (Song by Bow Wow Wow)
Uh-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-haah!!
Could you be rich and creative?
Rich in discoveries. I always knew that the principal quality was being curious about everything. You should be able to talk to the president in the same way you talk to someone who is asking you for money in the streets. Everyone has something to bring to you, always.
Have you ever been robbed?
I gave my heart a few times voluntarily to experience pain. The hardest pain should be experienced quickly. It makes you grow if you choose it. True robberies are the ones you endure consciously. Pleasant feeling right?
Great things come from great pain?
Always give all your blood, sweat and tears to a project. It doesn’t mean you can’t create if you don’t. But the essence of the soul finds its best part in digging into what is hidden behind the first look, the first feeling, the first step. The dark side?
Best attributes of a muse?
There isn’t a proper muse to me. A muse is someone who can inspire different people at different times by presence and by being alive.
Life is a bed of roses?
Don’t forget that roses have thorns.
If you had to pick for the rest of your life — would you rather be making music on a computer or play an analogue musical instrument?
Since I can’t spend one day without music, I would definitely pick the analogue musical instrument. Actually, playing the same physical instrument for the rest of my life shouldn’t be a problem, for new discoveries I am in fact listening to the same music on repeat (easily more than 72 hours on end, and this is something people can’t stand when they live with me).
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear? (Alfred Eisenstaedt)
A camera is the extension of my eye, living without it, I am afraid of an end … an end of? Death? A camera is the best way to capture images for eternity which already links them to “death” cause they are not alive anymore (contrary to cinema, as movies can be related to the living). I am not afraid.
How far away is a light year?
Not that far if you run fast! I was doing 800m competitions when I was 14-19 years old and when you finish a race you can definitely feel the light year.
What would you do on your last day on earth?
Go to NASA, take the first flight to the moon and stay there forever.
If you could only live at night, how would your life look like?
The first part of my night would be reading and writing. Then, for sure, I would have a call to make me go to a surreal point in space, where you get lost and find yourself in another dimension. Thinking of that, my favorite place to make this happen would be the Serpent à Plume (24 Place des Vosges in Paris), a place where you can spend special nights…
What are your new projects?
I was just in a short film directed by Bertrand Mandico (who did “Les Garçons Sauvages”) and there are two longer movies on my “to shoot list” this year. On the personal level, I am focusing on writing and some secret pieces of work that should be ready by this summer. As for my photography projects, I am planning on doing a second “catalogue”, mixing poetry, drawings and portraits.
_Uwe Buschmann (Copy Editing Silvia Strauch)
MakeUp: Lamia Bernad @_lamia_bernad_
Hair: Anais Lucas Sebagh @madamebrosse
