Céline Clanet – Máze – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Douglas Stockdale ·

With recent social-political events in the United States, I felt it was overdue to review Céline Clanet Photolucida book award, Máze, published in 2009. Clanet’s subject are the individuals and landscape of Norway’s Lapland, a culture that spans four countries far above the Artic Circle, and specifically the Sámi village of Máze.

Lapland is a place that is “challenging and potentially disorienting nature of its remote and wild landscapes”. I would agree with Awen Jones, who wrote the book’s Afterword, that Clanet’s oeuvre “seems to share a documentary vision and a conceptual approach”.

Her cultural portrait is of a Sámi society, which has adapted to the modern times of cell phone, snowmobiles, trailers and traditional houses, while the reindeer are still an ever-present part of their lives. Their colorful cultural garments are now reserved for special occasions, instead we see down snow-suits worn to deal with the snow, ice and inclement weather of the Artic. We sense a well measured balancing act by the Sámi, taking advantage of new technologies while maintaining one foot in their cultural and traditional history.

This book depicts a Sámi culture that appears to take time and events slowly in stride, with minimal dramatic events. Such as Jones retelling of a 1970’s protest against a pending dam that would flood vast parts of their homeland, during which there were many crowds for the visit by the King of Norway, while everyone remained silent holding place-cards ‘Vi kom Forst” (We were here first). Their non-violent protest was effective in stopping the dam’s construction, while another dam was later built that apparently was almost equally destructive, that flooded a vast reindeer territory and the start of a social conflict between Sámi people and reindeer herders against Norwegian police and authorities. Lessons, we continue to learn.

Clanet provides us with a glimpse into a place where very few of us have on our bucket-list to visit. We can sense the changes occurring for this society, for better or worse, while it appears that that they have and will continue to endure.

I had provided a very brief shout-out about the initial publication of this Photolucida award book when it was published in conjunction with two others, Andy Freeberg and Priya Kambli.

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Douglas Stockdale is the Senior Editor and founder, PhotoBook Journal

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Máze, Céline Clanet

Photographer: Céline Clanet, born in Chambéry and lives and works in Paris, France

Essay: Awen Jones

Text: English

Book: Hard cover, lithographic printing, ISBN 978-1-934334-09-6

Designer: Céline Clanet

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