THE ROOTLESS
MITZI JULENDAL | 22 YEARS
Mitzi Julendal is from Copenhagen. She grew up in a family where the father drank and she had to do the washing and hoovering. As a 9-year-old, she moved in with an old lady, where she found the love and care she did not receive from her parents.
The lady died of a heart attack and Mitzi was placed with a Christian foster family, where her friends were not allowed to visit. Later, she was sent to an independent school, but she soon lost interest in her surroundings when she started taking drugs. In the following years, she lived in different places, in shelters, in a car and on the street. Today, she lives in a flat in Copenhagen with her boyfriend.
Mitzi died in 2014.
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The Rootless
‘The Rootless’ is a project about homeless people in Denmark, which is intended to further understanding of the situation of the homeless by focusing on their lives and living conditions through a photo exhibition and the nationwide publishing of a book.
‘The Rootless’ are a group of 30 people who has somehow been pushed out of society either by or without conscious choice and who need more help than that which is provided by the efforts of our society. A large part of the problem is the fact that we do not look the people we are supposed to help in the eye.
Most of us would rather not face the reality we are confronted by through these people. Most of us fail to grasp the relations that take place in the streets and that makes it challenging for us to understand the homeless rather than turning our backs on them. This project tries to diminish the distance between us and homeless people by giving them facial features and telling their stories.
‘The Rootless’ was exhibited in 2010 as an outdoor exhibition in 6 larger cities in Denmark and had its Inaugural exhibition at the art festival Lys over Lolland (Light Over Lolland) same year.
