Neige Noire - Olivier Laban Mattei & Lisandru Laban-Giuliani

“In 1931, the Greenlandic writer Augo Lynge published a work of speculative fiction, only the second book ever written in Kalaallisut, the language of the Greenlandic people. […] The Inuit novelist imagined what his homeland would become ninety years later, in the year marking the tricentenary of Danish colonization. Augo Lynge dreamed of an independent Greenland, a land of plenty flourishing from its own resources. French photographer Olivier Laban-Mattei set out to see whether that dream had come true. […]

Swept by wind and snow, the town appears blurred, as if suspended in time. Figures move through the streets, bending beneath the gusts. A woman struggles to pull a cart behind her. The statue of the colonizer Hans Egede rises above the horizon. In the church, a priest celebrates Mass: it is confirmation day. In a bar, a woman drinks Carlsberg. A man embraces another woman. Moments of grace and intimacy that sensitively portray present-day Greenland, far from clichés.”—M Le Magazine du Monde, Anne-Françoise Hivert, 7 January 2023