Film Gene Limbrick
Music MĀDŁY (production IMAN IMAN)
Production Nell Card
Photography Emli Bendixen
Words Dale Berning Sawa

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Due north of Bristol's city centre, where Montpelier's saturated bohemia meets Stokes Croft, stands a Korean restaurant called Bokman. With extensive experience cooking in fabled kitchens in both Seoul and Paris, chefs Kyu Jeong Jeon and Duncan Robertson set up shop on Nine Tree Hill before the pandemic.

Behind a decorative awning that brings to mind Korean artist Haegue Yang's shamanistic paper cutouts, the team serves anju, that is, drinking food. Things like tteokbokki (rice cakes simmered in a red spicy stew), banchan pickles and galbi short ribs braised in sweet soy, paired with natural wines and craft beers, all local.

For photographer Emli Bendixen, who has also called many places home, Bokman is a destination. "Food is universal," she says, "and such a pure way of showing love. You don't need a language beyond that." She first ate there shortly after they opened. (The duo have since opened a second outpost, Dongnae – meaning "neighbourhood" – on Chandos Road in Redland.) It felt like a way for her to reconnect with the Korean culture into which she'd been born but not raised.

Emli is South Korean by birth, a Danish national by adoption and a British resident by choice. She grew up in Denmark's countryside, mostly on Funen, "the middle island", then moved to London as an adult. Ten years ago, she and her partner moved into a house on a Bristol hill, not too far from the restaurant. “At the time, we didn't realise how the move would affect my work,” Emli reflects. “As it happens, it's had a really positive impact. I've had a lot of commissions outside of the city …”

Nature, as Emli has come to realise, isn't only to be found beyond the city limits. So much green is woven into Bristol's shapeshifting streets. On assignment for The Modern House, Emli explores the streets like a small child on an Easter egg hunt, instinctively choosing to shoot fragments of the city. Her lens seeks out Narroways Nature Reserve, a pinch of grass and woodland that unfurls between diverging rail lines. She photographs red chillies drying on long stalks, wayward houseplants, a panier of foraged mushrooms in a hidden cafe. She alights as quickly on red petals underfoot on an unkempt pavement as she does on the fake dashboard rose she spots through a driver's window. Trees are everywhere, their bare branches blurred in the foreground or stretching up and out of the frame. Her images are bathed in a golden light that belies the grey flatness of the day.

Denmark is, in many ways, not that different to the UK, Emli tells me. “When I visit now, I really feel at home there. But it's interesting, because when I lived in Denmark, I didn't massively feel at home, because I was adopted. I think that’s why I sought out London in the first place. I wanted to be somewhere where people don't ask where you're from.”

The fact that Emli and her partner are a queer family means the quest for a diverse community, and acceptance, is even more fundamental. Bristolian neighbourhoods such as Stokes Croft, have offered something of what they knew in London. But they've also grown to appreciate where Bristol differs from the capital. If London fosters transience, Bristol brings out authenticity.

Leona Williamson, who is photographed here, is a case in point. She founded the City Farm Cafe in St Werburgh's in 2005. After rainy walks ("It's my Danish side," says the photographer, "there's no such thing as bad weather."), Emli’s children do drawings over hot drinks, which Leona puts up on her wall. "She knows our kids," says Emli. "For 20 years, Leona has been foraging and making kombucha and learning about the health benefits of natural remedies and plants. She's been doing all these things since way before everyone thought it was cool. She's the real deal,” says Emli.

The best describers of place and person will tell you that we carry about within ourselves the landscapes of our childhoods – whether consciously or not. Quite whether they anchor or alienate you, however, can be a lifelong question: belonging is so easily elusive. "I came into the world quite rootless,” Emli reflects. “I don’t remember the landscape or anything else from Korea because I was three months old when I left. I think I've always floated and that's been fine. But now that we have children, I feel I owe them a culture and a rootedness that I never had." Bit by bit, Bristol, it seems, is giving Emli the tools to provide just that.