Untitled Document

PRESENTING MÁZE BY CÉLINE CLANET

Looking For the Lost Reindeer

STATEMENT
I have lived several months in Máze, up to the north of the Arctic Circle, in Norway. There, I met a quiet people, melancholic, captivating, very proud of their Sami village and territory, proud of these landscapes they are constantly gazing at with binoculars that they never separate from, even at home.

I have discovered this unknown European Arctic, this surprising indigenous people that most don’t know, or associate by mistake with Santa Claus, the Inuit, or igloos. I have seen ravages of cultural integration, this soft genocide that wears out spirits and floods souls with alcohol or self-negation.

I have pictured Sami people, houses, territory and reindeers that should not be here today, flooded with waters of a dam project that Norwegian government planned in early 70s, and fortunately aborted.

I probably made pictures of a reality that will be soon impossible to see anyway, due to cultural integration and the global warming disaster in Arctic.

I have tasted Ante’s and Ole-Ailo’s favorite season, when days get longer and temperatures get milder.

The perfect moment, when time doesn’t exist anymore and night is gone, in which they immerse themselves: fishing through an ice hole in Suolojarvi Lake, or riding the snowscooter across the tundra. Talking, or laying down doing nothing, saying nothing. Just being.

Q&A
Click HERE to read the conversation between Julie Fishkin and Céline Clanet.

BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1977 and raised in the French Alps, Céline now lives and works in Paris, France. A graduate from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie of Arles with jury honors in 1999, she works today as a freelance photographer and graphic designer.

Her work deals with human territory, memory and identity issues. For her, making each series is an excuse to experience the world differently, to question it, or to record the parts of it that are threatening to fade away for ever. She regularly drives to Northern Europe in her beloved «Fearless Reindeer» Peugeot, up to the Sami village of Máze, where she lives for several weeks or months, among her Sami friends, in the tundra.

Her work has been exhibited in France and abroad, and has been published in Vision, Capricious, Libération, Photo Nouvelles, Infra-Mince... Her series «Un mince vernis de réalité» (A thin varnish of reality) has been published as a book by Filigranes editions in 2005, along with 3 other photographers’ series. She recently won the PEEK / Art+Commerce contest, and was a finalist at the International Talent Support (ITS) contest in Italy. She also won the French Dotation Kodak and a grant from the DRAC (Direction Régionale pour l’Art Contemporain).

celinette.com

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