She is a French photographer based in Paris and the recipient of major awards such as the Leica Oscar Barnack Award, the World Press Photo, and the Prix Niépce. She has received several commissions from the French Ministry of Culture and has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Her works are held in prestigious public and private collections. She has published seven monographs, including Peuples de Sibérie and Amour. Positioned between reality and fiction, her work explores themes such as memory, adolescence, and travel. She is represented by the In Camera gallery and is a member of the Vu agency.
The exhibition Solstice by photographer Claudine Doury marks the seventh and final chapter of the contemporary photography cycle Homecoming, conceived by Irene Alison and curated by Irene Alison and Paolo Cagnacci. The event is organized in collaboration with Forma Edizioni and Associazione InFoto Firenze, with the support of Gruppo AF and Banca Ifigest. The opening will take place on Wednesday, September 25, 2024, at 6:30 PM, in the presence of the artist and the curators. Between 2023 and 2024, the Homecoming series explored the concept of identity in relation to place, investigating the idea of “home” as a return to one’s… a rediscovery of personal culture and roots. With Solstice by Claudine Doury, curated by Irene Alison and Paolo Cagnacci, this journey culminates in a body of work that leads us – through the French photographer’s images – into an exploration of ancient rituals and deeply contemporary concerns: the relationship between humans and nature, the dialogue between present and memory, the revolutionary creative power of femininity, and the fragile threshold between transition, loss, transformation, and new beginnings.
A sensitive and empathetic traveler who has extensively documented regions such as Central Asia, Crimea, and Siberia, and winner of the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 1999, Doury has, for over a decade, undertaken an annual journey every June 21st. From St. Petersburg to Maloyaroslavets in Russia, from Lake Ives Island in Belarus to Kaunas, Vilnius, and the Polish and Latvian countryside, she captures the rituals of the solstice.
Called Kupala by the Slavs and Kupalès by the Balts, the solstice night is a traditional celebration rooted in ancient pagan festivals honoring the forces of nature and the cult of the sun – an event that welcomes and celebrates the brief period in which the northern skies reach twilight but never full darkness. While largely forgotten in much of Western Europe, these sun-centered pagan rites remain deeply felt in the northern regions of Eastern Europe.
Doury documents them with mysterious, delicate images that balance between reality and dream, evoking the invisible forces that stir through these landscapes on a night that seems endless and full of new beginnings. Her work is a tribute to the expressive and spiritual power of light.
