Les Mornes, le feu (The Dunes, the Fire)

Les Mornes, le Feu is a series born out of my fascination for Caribbean urban culture and esotericism. It explores the spaces where this culture is hybridized, transformed and invested on a daily basis.

«Les Mornes, le feu» is a long term project that focuses on urban culture and youth in the French oversea islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Overseas are spaces of hybridity : neither really French nor completely independent from French culture and history, they are territories deeply anchored in and worked by histories, pasts and contemporaries. In those spaces historically constructed through exotic stereotypes —idyllic landscapes, pristine beaches, luxuriant palm tree— Les Mornes, le feu seeks a different narrative. Anchored in the postcolonial city and and its youth, it proposes a vibrant exploration of a generation redefining our understanding of French-Caribbean identities today. 

Following a group of mostly young men through their practice of «cabrage», or «rodeo» on a parking lot of Fort-de-France, the photographer offers a contemporary perspective on both land and bodies. Beyond the acrobatic figures, the photographs reveal a universe where individual expression mixes with a spirit of camaraderie, and where the boundaries of urban space are pushed back. The parking lot of Aliker Stadium becomes a refuge where young people find a way to assert themselves, create and connect through a practice that is not only physical but also spiritual. Anchored in the postcolonial city, the landscapes that unfold evoke an environment that is both mythical and mystical. Nature, in cohabitation with the urban, is shaped by it and adorned with objects charged with symbolism and ritual force. These elements suggest a deep connection between the material and spiritual worlds, reinforcing the mystical aspect of the shared experience.

Beyond the historical legacy of slavery, these young people are reclaiming the richness of a local hybrid, ever-evolving culture, drawing on French roots, ties to neighboring English-speaking islands, and cultural influences from the United States. They weave a unique narrative, where the diversity of identities blends harmoniously into a quest for personal and collective expression. Offering alternative representations of caribbeaness and tender portraits of black masculinity, the series explores contemporary issues and debates in documentary photography, seeking to amplify marginalized voices and disrupt dominant discourses. It invites us to question our own perceptions and recognize the diversity of stories that weave the fabric of the Caribbean, acknowledging the multiple narratives that shapes French-Caribbean identities today.

Cédrine Scheidig (born 1994, France) is a French-Caribbean photographer based in Paris. Anchored between Europe and the Americas, she grew up in the suburban outskirts of Paris, a space which is a site of social and racial struggles, but also of flourishing diasporic lives and imaginaries. Drawing from her dual heritage, she attempts to make sense of the poetics and politics of the diasporic experience, exploring black geographies in the Caribbean and the periphery/centers of colonial western empires. Unraveling the complex dimensions of caribbeanness and blackness, her photography engages with insularity, migration, urban culture, youth and the imaginaries that emerge from uprooting. At the intersection of documentary and poetic approaches, her work yields delicate portraits and urban landscapes bathed in a soft light, weaving together different historical and spatial eras into the search of what she defines as a «black sense of space». A graduate from Ecole Nationale de la Photographie d’Arles (2021), her work has been presented in several group exhibitions, including Fotografia Europea Festival (2023, Italy), Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane (2023, Guyane), Encontros da Imagem (2023, Portugal), Plat(t)form Fotomuseum Winterthur (2022, Switzerland), Dior Prize w/ LUMA Foundation (2021, Arles), Rencontres internationales de la photographie (2021, Arles) and in a debut solo exhibition at Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, in February 2023.