8.27.2011

CLINT McLEAN: The Girl Who Married a Snake

Bolivia Salt
Photograph (c) Clint McLean

Elephants, from the series Dubaï World
Photograph (c) Clint McLean

Kumari in Throne
Photograph (c) Clint McLean

Four Brothers and the Hyenas
Photograph (c) Clint McLean

The Girl Who Married A Snake
Photograph (c) Clint McLean

Clint McLean is a photographer and Director of Photography based in Dubaï/Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Having worked in Canada for many of the major titles, McLean was brought to the UAE to help launch a new weekend magazine. The new magazine won many International Photography Awards before he moved into a role of content creation and launched The National's photography blog NationalView.ae.

McLean is also a fellow correspondent for La Lettre de la Photographie.
He's contributed several great pieces from Dubaï, such as Gazelle Samizay’s series Upon My Daughter and Alixandra Fazzina's Escape from Somalia, among others.

Returning to freelance photography and directing, Mclean is working on multiple long-term exhibition projects including ones on Salt and Fables.
So far, he's created fable based images in India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Palestine. And, in case it's not evident, he doesn't use Photoshop for manipulation. There's no cut and paste, etc. The hyenas and the cobra are real and no images are combined.

I spoke with Clint recently and he explained about his ongoing projects:

"Salt is my first long term project. I have been working on it for over three years and there is no end in site. The series is a subtle way of looking at how simple things can have grand beginnings, or how great starts sometimes end humble. The often majestic Saltscapes make the end product seem somewhat pathetic, and emphasize the great changes through scale and context.

Dubaï World is a property development in the United Arab Emirates that never really got off the ground. The developer and the emirate have a great kitsch factor and no sense of irony which allows Dubai World to refer to both the development and the emirate.

The Kumari of Nepal are considered living goddesses and are chosen at about three years old to be spiritual leaders until they reach puberty at which time they return to being regular people. I have been following a number of current and former Kumari in this ongoing project. As in much of my work, there is an 'other-worldliness' to the Kumari which seems part real and part fairy tale.

The Girl Who Married a Snake (fables): This work is a series of staged images based on fables in various countries I have found myself in over the last couple years. The title of the series is taken from the first fable I staged which was in India. Folktales are an interesting insight into a culture, and the work becomes something between fact and fiction. Since the fables are part of the fabric of the society and culture, and the people, locations and props in the images are all authentic, there is a lot of true information in the staged images. Hopefully they help to add some context to places that people often have very narrow views of."

2 comments:

Pierre BOYER said...

Great...
Enjoy your day !

Pierre
http://pierre-boyer.blogspot.com/

R Montalban said...

Interesting, beautiful photographs and reasons behind making them.