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Sisters of the Hunt examines the participation of women in contemporary hunting practices in southern France and rural Louisiana. The project originated when documentary and portrait photographer Camille Lenain noted her own inability to visualize women as hunters. This observation led to a five-year documentation period in which Lenain accompanied female hunters across multiple environments to record their activities, social dynamics and interactions with the land and wildlife.
The series balances its attention across the hunters, the prey and the landscape, forming a three-point framework through which the ritual of the hunt is understood and contextualized. The images are supported by deeply immersive audio recordings in which participants describe their motivations, experiences and identity against the backdrop of field recordings.
Sisters of the Hunt alludes to a pattern of community and solidarity among female hunters, characterized by cooperative practices, shared learning environments and interdependence in the field. The project contributes to the important ongoing discussions around gender roles and representation within rural and outdoor traditions, while exploring and exposing the extraordinary power of “female hunters and their intimate relationship to the land, to their harvest and to each other.”
About Camille Farrah Lanain
Camille Farrah Lenain is a French-Algerian documentary and portrait photographer who grew up in Paris, studied Photography at l’ESA in Brussels and at ICP in New York City. She relocated to New Orleans in 2013, where she teaches at Tulane University and works on long-term projects that challenges societal preconception, exploring the notions of stereotypes, collective memory and plural identities.
Her work has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, Marie-Claire, T Magazine, Sierra Magazine, The Bitter Southerner and Libération.
In 2024, she was the winner for the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, the USA winner for the Leica Women Foto Prize and a winner for the Aperture Creators Lab. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Arab World Institute, the CAC, Festival Incadaques, Photoville and PhotoVogue Festival. She was previously an Artist-in-Residence at the Joan Mitchell Center and CPW (Center of Photography in Woodstock).
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