It was 21 June 2012, the longest day of the year, and around a million people were in St Petersburg for the White Nights festival. This annual city-wide event celebrates the brief period when skies reach twilight but never darkness. In most of western Europe – including France, where I’m from – pagan sun celebrations have largely been forgotten, although there are gatherings at Stonehenge in Britain and the midsummer celebrations in Sweden. However, in the northern regions of eastern Europe, the rituals remain, steeped in centuries of tradition. In these places, there is little to no sun for many months of the year. So when it comes, everyone worships it.
This image is part of Solstice, an ongoing body of work documenting pagan summer rituals. In over a decade, I’ve travelled through Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland studying how different communities celebrate the summer solstice, marking the return of light after so many months in near-complete darkness.
I had visited Russia many times before, but this was my first time at White Nights. That evening, the streets of St Petersburg were filled with young people, who had travelled from all over the suburbs to mark the end of their school year. There were girls standing in the middle of the street, eyes closed, basking in the light with their arms outstretched. Others were singing, dancing and drinking champagne.
At the time, I was reading a Fyodor Dostoevsky short story called White Nights, a powerful tale about a boy and girl who fall in love by the canal in St Petersburg. I’ve always been drawn to photographing teenagers – people at a transitory period in human life. I think of those years as some of the most important of my own. Just like the Dostoevsky story, these teenagers were falling in love and building friendships. I was moved by the small moments I witnessed between them, how they were making their own rituals, starting their new lives.
At around 9pm, I happened upon a cafe that was a few steps below street level, not quite underground, but enough to be cavernously dark. Inside, there was a gathering of teenage girls, lit up by beautiful streams of sun bursting through the wooden window frames. I noticed one girl sitting a little apart from the group, near the entrance. Her face was flooded by the light. What was she doing? Was she expecting friends? Was she sad? She didn’t move for a long time – that’s what caught my attention. I observed the girl for a while, but I took the photograph quickly – it wasn’t staged at all. I knew nothing about her except that, for me at that precise moment, she represented the essence of the solstice: the communion of time and Earth’s cycles, whether we are in the countryside or the city.
Here we have a young contemporary woman in a big modern city celebrating a centuries-old tradition. She represents everything I want to communicate about the power of the solstice.
I didn’t take any more photographs of the girl. I like keeping her face hidden – it’s the same in every other photograph of women and girls in this series. This leaves room for mystery – but, more importantly, it means the images speak about all women and our relationships to the sun, as well as to one another. I’ve observed many pagan festivals across eastern Europe, and noticed that there is always a strong focus on women and fertility. The Kupala Nights, a major folk festival that takes place across the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian countryside, originates in the worship of Kupalo, the Slavic god of love and fertility.
Initially, I was interested in summer solstice traditions but, increasingly, the project has been for myself, putting me more in touch with the light. For a photographer, light is everything. Yet in our modern lives, we perhaps don’t notice it enough. My work is about the passage of time: the White Nights could be the metaphor for human life, its brevity and its fragility. I’ll return to the north again next June. I need to go – just to feel that extraordinary light.
Claudine Doury
Born: Blois, France, 1959
Trained: Self taught
Influences: Robert Frank, Sally Mann, Andrei Tarkovsky
High point: “In 1996, I took my two-year-old to northern Siberia for several months to shoot my first photo project, People of Siberia. I proved that it was possible to be a young mother and do the work I love.”
Low point: “Probably from that same trip. Sometimes, it was very challenging to travel, work and raise a child at the same time.”
Top tip: “Trust yourself and keep moving forward.”
• Solstice by Claudine Doury will be published by Chose Commune in 2024
