«Looking for a metaphor for Cédrine Scheidig’s imagery, I gravitated toward zouk, which is a musical genre born and popularized in Cayenne, a city in the French Caribbean, and connected further off to France and West Africa. Artist and curator Marie-Julie Chalu writes in the exhibition catalogue An Open Anthology of Afro-French Songs that: “Zouk, in its genesis, is an Afro-diasporic, Afro-Atlantic music, from Pointe-à-Pitre to Fort-de-France, through Abidjan, Kinshasa, Luanda, Dakar, Yaoundé, and Paris. . . . We can already call it transnational music.”¹ I view Scheidig’s imagery through zouk, because of its movements and circuits, through the French Caribbean and beyond.

It follows a map of Blackness that is outside the Anglophone world, and this is one of the main insights of Scheidig’s work. I would argue that zouk enables one to inhabit a world, such as that depicted in her imagery of French Guiana, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. The artist’s biography, too, recalls the circuits of zouk. Scheidig was born in Paris to working-class parents and grew up listening to her parents’ music, including Kassav’, a popular band that is said to have started the musical sound of zouk. An alternative biography states that the musical sound was born in Cayenne, French Guiana, in 1983. And Scheidig would return to Cayenne to continue her creative practice. Even the fact that Jacob Desvarieux, a founder of the band Kassav’, would be born in Paris, but declare that “It is not my home,” reminds of the circuits which are properly diasporic.² In a similar way, Scheidig is unmoored by the movements of popular music made by Black people in Dakar, Cayenne, or Paris. This insight is central to her work.

Starting with a focus on questions that concern Black experience, the artist’s work ultimately engages with theoretical and conceptual problems relating to the construction of identities. Geography plays a role in her inquiry, but so do history, race, and culture. Though her inquiry is essentially centered in the French Caribbean, its geographical boundaries stretch toward France and the United States, and thus “Blackness” is pushed beyond notions of nationality, even limiting ideas of ethnicity toward sensibility and/or expression.»

1 Marie-Julie Chalu, Andie Oxybel, Audrey Célestine, “Zouk Vintage: Excerpt of episode 3, Paris, La Migration Antillaise et le Zouk,” trans. Aïda Sidhoum, in An Open Anthology of Afro-French Songs, ed. Aïda Sidhoum (New York: Bard College, 2024), pp. 46–49.

«Like the writers Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Édouard Glissant before her, Cédrine Scheidig is, to borrow the words of Glissant’s American translator, a distinguished theorist of "Caribbean self-formation.” Born in 1994 in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburbs northeast of Paris to a French mother and a Guadeloupean father, Scheidig began taking photographs in her early twenties. Her first mature work explored the immigrant communities in which she grew up. Her father had left Guadeloupe in the 1970s, one of many young men drawn from the Caribbean to European capitals such as London and Paris by the promise of employment and economic prosperity.

While studying in Arles, a city in southern France renowned for its art school and photography festival, Scheidig established a deliberately time-consuming, labor-intensive practice—bulky camera equipment, analog film, handmade prints—to undercut some of the more damning associations of photography as a gendered discourse and an ethnographic tool. In plain terms, this gave her multiple ways of relating to people in the process of taking their pictures. Scheidig describes photography in general as a language, and in particular as the most textured, tactile, and best language for critically engaging the world around her.

Over the past five years, Scheidig has developed an expansive body of work on the experience of Blackness in forging both regional and diasporic Afro-Caribbean identities. She has photographed young men popping wheelies in the Martinican capital, Fort-de-France, and delved into the riotous world of carnival sound systems in London’s Notting Hill. Moving nimbly from Europe to Africa, the Antilles, and Latin America, she followed tenuous but meaningful connections among young people who recognize themselves in one another despite being geographically scattered. These connections emerge through music, fashion, and hip-hop culture, which coexist in Scheidig’s photographs alongside hints of ceremonial magic, overabundant nature, and a protectively vague sense of spiritualism. True to Glissant’s playfulness with language and his insistence on associative thinking, Scheidig’s photography expresses all these elements in a barrage of arresting details. Her portraits, landscapes, and still lifes deliver alternating jolts of familiarity and strangeness as she brings objects together in unexpected combinations.

The strength of Scheidig’s most recent series, This trace where salt was (2023), dwells in the deceptive simplicities of a worn-out blue-and-white tiled floor, a Brooklyn Nets jersey, and three incongruous sets of angels’ wings. Each photograph is keyed to a larger set of historical circumstances as Scheidig attends to the specificities of hair, scarring, tattoos, bejeweled hands, and bursts of self-fashioning, as evidenced by her striking portrait of a defiant young woman, set against the murky coast of French Guiana, with a dramatic line of safety pins running down and holding together the front of her dragon-adorned crop top.

Through the photographs she produced in Cayenne, Scheidig triangulates France, the Caribbean, and the South American continent just as she reconfigures the relationship of the horizon, the ocean, and the coast, or the city, the density of the forest, and the suggestion of a spirit world. Scheidig describes This trace where salt was as both a part of her engagement with the Caribbean and a mechanism for loosening and extending that project. "I’m not working in closed circles,” she says. The series pushes her work beyond notions of islands or identities alone to consider more complicated but ultimately more productive (and more productively Glissantian) sites of encounter, collision, and entanglement.»

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a writer based in Geneva and Beirut.

«Embarking on a visual journey, Scheidig navigates the cultural tapestry of the Caribbean, weaving an intimate narrative unveiling layers of identity, history, and aspiration.

“What does it mean to be a young man in the Caribbean today?” French-Caribbean photographer Cédrine Scheidig ponders, as she reflects on her father’s experience, as a young man, years ago: He moved to France in his twenties, during the 70s, from Guadeloupe, the overseas department of France.

Scheidig was born in the Paris suburbs, a lively Caribbean community nestled around them, and was raised amidst this robust interlink between France and the islands. Her upbringing occurred in a unique environment characterized by significant diversity in people's origins, spanning from northern and western Africa to the Caribbean, a dual background many share.

Visiting family in the Caribbean was part of her childhood. Later, she returned as a photographer. She observed an underrepresentation of Caribbean culture within the photography community. Images often carried either a commercial appeal focused on tourism or depicted remnants of the colonial past. Scheidig was determined to create a body of work that authentically captures the contemporary Caribbean and its urban culture.

In Les Mornes, le feu (The Dunes, the Fire), young men are at the heart of Scheidig’s work. We witness them gathering on Sundays with their bikes in a parking lot in Fort-de-France, the capital city of Martinique. Here, they swiftly forge enduring bonds. And the space quickly transforms into a ‘public square’ as the entire community congregates: “It's a space where people create their own entertainments but also create community together,” Scheidig says.

Through photography, she crafts a richer understanding of Guadalupe and Martinique, and this new visual language enables her to perceive Caribbean culture from the viewpoint of a younger generation, distinct from her father's perspective.

In Les Mornes, le feu (The Dunes, the Fire), there are still lifes, urban landscapes, close-ups, but portraits take center stage. Photographing young men evokes memories of her father and the kind of young man he was. But she delves deeper, probing into the idea of masculinity in the Caribbean. “I work on masculinity because I like this idea to give more sensitive representations of black young men or black bodies.”

She finds it challenging to give singularity to these bodies as they tend to be blended by media into a homogeneous, anonymous mass, often disregarding their full humanity—uniqueness, autonomy, and complexity of individuals. “Portraiture for me is this direct encounter with someone that is very singular and also this very powerful personality that can show through the picture.” Clothes, jewelry, small details become part of the story. “It says something about the way people live, the way people experience themselves, the way they want to be seen.”

In contrast to previous generations, like her father's who exhibited a notable closeness to France and its culture, the newer generation displays a less pronounced connection. Among those she has photographed, there's a heightened sense of belonging to a space more proximate to the Americas due to its geographical location and the historical context of colonialism, settlements, and slavery. Somehow she notes, those ties are much stronger now with those regions compared to a country that is more than 7,000 kilometers away, on the other side of the ocean.

“After years, and generations, of identifying to white people and realizing […] it’s alienating… we need to find other ways of identifying that makes us feel good, that looks like us and that speaks to our history.”

Scheidig captures the image of Martinique's unofficial flag painted on a wall—a striking contrast of vibrant green, red, and black hues—a symbolic representation of the community's aspiration for autonomy. This flag is a little bit everywhere, and its colors resonate strongly in Scheidig's photos: the lush green reminiscent of the flourishing Caribbean nature, the red showcased in the attire or hairstyles of the men she portrays. Finally, these hues echo in a flower—a bicolored anthurium—bathed in sunlight.»

«In his seminal book Poétique de la Relation (Poetics of Relation), the revered Martinique writer, philosopher and critic Édouard Glissant argued that poetics – whether expressed through art or literature – has a political and aesthetic function. His writings directly inspire the work of the 28-year-old French Caribbean photographer Cédrine Scheidig, the winner of the Dior Prize for Photography 2021. Her upcoming solo presentation, de la mer à la terre (Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris), contemplates the complex identity of the Black diaspora.

Bringing together two recent bodies of work – It is a Blessing to be the Color of Earth (2020), and Les mornes, le feu (The dunes, the fire) (2022) – her new exhibition proposes a dialogue between two geographical locations: the Parisian suburbs and the French overseas territory of Martinique. A reflection of her dual identity, Scheidig’s work celebrates the youth culture of today’s globally scattered Afro-Caribbean communities. But by doing so, she also challenges the medium of photography itself: “My work is about capturing the lighter, more poetic representations of the Black diaspora, rather than portraying those communities amongst suffering, which has so often been the case in the history of photography.”


Born in Bobigny, a banlieue [or suburb] in northeast Paris, Scheidig’s mixed heritage was shared by most people from her community, many of whom also had relatives who emigrated to France from French overseas territories in the Caribbean during the Windrush era. “For us, ‘home’ isn’t strictly Paris, or France, or the Caribbean – the banlieue has its own identity and culture, almost like a third island.” The idea of the third island – or third space – in postcolonial thought refers to the notion of hybridity, which in layman’s terms means a transcultural space – geographical, cultural or linguistic – that is inextricably tied to the histories of colonialism. In this in-between space, there is also resistance against the prevailing systems of power. Scheidig tells Dazed, “My exploration of Caribbean spaces is a way to explore territories of hybridity – neither French or completely independent from French culture and history.”

 Expanding upon this idea, the title of Scheidig’s show De La Mer À Terre (Of the Sea and Earth) evokes transatlantic connections between multiple sites and cultures; the interrelation between French overseas territories in the Caribbean such as Martinique and Guadeloupe (where her father is from), to diverse European cities such as Paris, and even to Africa – the ancestral root. “I’ve always been told I’m French, but that doesn’t mean I identify with that culture in a practical sense,” she admits – and her work is an exploration of that ambivalence.
 Adopting an intuitive approach, Scheidig prefers to work slowly. She builds up her portfolio as a creative durational process that is inseparable to the meaning of her final images. “I like to revisit places and people over long stretches of time. It allows me to become more sensitive to that environment, and that’s when my photographs become stronger.” She creates and carefully selects shots that are imbued with a delicate yet broader gaze, “capturing an overall sense of place.”

Although focusing on portraiture, Scheidig’s work is not strictly centred on a subject’s individual identity. Rather, her vision focuses on the finer, subtle details – the juxtaposition of colours, textures and the play of light as way to create beauty, and thereby, also compassion. “My work is a search for vulnerability. It’s about trying to connect with other people,” she tells Dazed. Her reverse portraits – often highlighting her subjects from behind – create images that are instantaneously close yet mysterious, intimate yet universal, empowering but also vulnerable. “I work with portraiture because it captures a moment of encounter, through which we can find someone’s vulnerability and learn to empathise with them.”

According to Glissant, through a poetic vision, we can begin to build new imaginaries – and propose alternative ways of understanding others. In this sense, the poetic is political: “I’m reclaiming a space of vulnerability for Black bodies,” Scheidig explains. For the artist, this is the first step in dismantling dominant cultural perceptions that trickle out into real-world attitudes: “It’s about a kind of humanism… I’m thinking about how to connect with people on a deeper level through photography.”»

The French-born photographer – who was selected for this year’s Ones to Watch – produces work that reflects on what it means to be an immigrant

“My dad grew up on this very small island, all natural, just eating from the garden. Then he hits age 20 and he’s living in a high-rise apartment block – this area that’s nothing but concrete.” Cédrine Scheidig is reflecting on what it means to be an immigrant: how this uprooting can mess with your understanding of the world and where you fit into it. Drawn by the promise of work, Scheidig’s father relocated from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a suburb of Paris in the late 70s. Today, French-born Scheidig uses photography to explore notions of home, place, and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora.

Abundant in warm light and a near-hypnotising serenity, the 28-year-old’s portfolio sees delicate portraits of Black and brown subjects interlaced with still lifes and landscapes: an afro comb placed on a table; palm trees enveloped by a fading sky. Rather than chronicling reality in the typical documentary sense, the artist’s objective is to “get the feel of a place; of the people you can encounter there, and how this builds a universe”.

Scheidig’s ongoing project, Insular, captures the formation of a growing African community in Malta as a result of modern migration on the central Mediterranean route. A Life In-Between explores the 200,000-strong West Indian population living in mainland France. Central to Scheidig’s work is an interrogation of dual heritage, and the experience of being caught between worlds. But also, crucially, a rebuttal of the white colonial gaze.

“I don’t want my pictures to document [Black] struggle because people know it’s there,” says Scheidig. Rather, through a soft and loving gaze, “what I am trying to do is normalise [the diaspora’s] presence… Root them through pictures.”

Scheidig graduated in 2021 with an MA from the French National School of Photography in Arles, where the development of her craft was inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant, WEB Du Bois and other Black thinkers. Alongside several artist residencies in the past year, she won the 2021 Dior Prize for Photography and Visual Arts for Young Talents, and has worked on assignments for the likes of Nike and The New York Times. She will be exhibiting in various capacities in Paris, Malta and Switzerland throughout 2022 and 2023.

“Cédrine Scheidig embodies a discreet but strong new generation of young French photographers working within the realm of post-documentary,” says writer and curator Taous Dahmani, who nominated her for Ones to Watch. “She contains within herself the audacity to work with reality, and the intelligence necessary for this task. Her humanity informs her methodology and images.”

It is significant that most of Scheidig’s projects are ongoing. Her process is painstakingly slow: allowing ideas time to distil; returning to places and people over the course of several years. As for her message, this is more urgent. To subscribe to Glissant’s philosophy, if we are to achieve a world wherein Black diasporic people can truly live at peace, we must first be able to imagine it. The art of Cédrine Scheidig exists to help us do just that.