FAR AWAY FROM HOME
Nicolas is my brother. He left home when he was 17, to become a shepherd in southern France. He grew up in Paris and didn’t have any specific bond with the agricultural field. His school failure lead him to leave family, friends and his hometown for upcountry and loneliness. How can someone of only 21 push himself into that much isolation? Is it for the fantasy of a hermit life as depicted in movies such as Into the Wild or is it because of a real disagreement in social interaction in society? The city scares him. He communicates very little, with silence invading his days. Wrapped up in his sleeping bag during winter, he doesn’t complains. He likes his nomadic life and makes fun of himself calling himself the ‘mountain’s hobo’. How many alter egos does Nicolas have today?
More and more young people are looking for an alternative way of life to escape the usual routine. Others try to start over their humiliating school failure.
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CLEMENTINE SCHNEIDERMANN was born in 1991 in Paris, France. She discovered photography at the age of 16 by doing street photography in Paris, and left France at 18 to study photography at the applied school of art in Vevey in Switzerland, where she had the opportunity to participate in workshops with documentary photographers such as Guillaume Herbaut, Eva Leitolf, Reiner Riedler and Stanley Greene.
She is now based in the UK where she is undertaking a Masters in Documentary Photography at Newport University in Wales. Clémentine began her series Far away from home in 2010 and continues to create work with the aim of following her brother’s evolution in the long run. She is mainly interested in people who lead alternative lifestyles, and is also working on a project about performers in England.