This edition brings together several generations of talented female authors, young or experimented, invested in different fields of photography. They each have a particular story to tell, in their own way. Claudine Doury went to the Russian Far East for the first time in , then in , in order to witness the life of the native Siberian peoples.
Traveling along the banks of the Amur River, she crossed the country from Nergen to Bogorodskoye, passing through the villages of Bulava and Us-Gur. Twenty years later, she returned to the region to find the Nanais, Ultches and Nivkhes families she had met during her previous trips.
She wishes to bear witness to the passage of time on these families photographed at the time, but also to the mutations that may have operated on a larger scale on these populations. This portrait of families from the Asian peoples native to Amour allows us to redefine the contours of a territory that bears the traces of its history: the conquest of the East, the arrival of the Cossacks and the Russian settlement over the centuries, right up to the current influence of the powerful Chinese border on the geopolitics of the region.
When I arrive at the dock in Jackson, a crowd is milling around a band. Not far away, I see a small group, two women and two young girls, standing.
I try to guess if they are related. I have the proof when the taller of the two girls puts her hand in the neck of one of the women, seeking her approval, by this silent and intimate gesture of daughter to mother. The latter agrees with a calmness that suggests that she is used to allowing this kind of thing. The girl goes towards the music. She walks with ease to the center of the circle which opens as if the crowd was waiting for her to come. Her body moves freely, without any pose effects or adult parody.
