Sisters of the Hunt / Soeurs de la Chasse

This past deer season, just before I felled the third harvest of my life, I was soaking in the silence from the stand—a stand my husband had hauled out into a plot of clover, rye, and turnips he had planted in woods my father owned. Settling into the meditative tradition of observing, of listening, that accompanies the hunt, I became, as I always do, overwhelmed by the intimate wonder of such deep immersion in the wild—this little window of nature I was, for now, made privy to. When the time came to shoot, my husband whispered encouraging nothings in my ear, as he had the last time, and as my father had the first time.

My relationship to the hunt—my access to these moments—has always relied on my relationship with men. And as we lifted my kill onto the back of the four wheeler, he taking the front legs while I took the back, it occurred to me that I had every tool at my disposal to do this myself, if I wanted to. What, for all these years, has stopped me from wholly embracing the hunt as something of my own, the way my brothers and my father and my husband have?

The fact that I am a woman?

In the latest project by New Orleans-based, French-Algerian photographer Camille Farrah Lenain, the world of the hunt is explored from the perspective of the 21st century woman. Currently on exhibit at NUNU Arts and Culture Collective, Sisters of the Hunt / Soeurs de la Chasse centers the huntress, and the tensions of her role as killer and life-giver, nurturer and destroyer, a predator in a world that considers her prey.

When she first embarked on the project in 2019, Lenain was grappling with her own discomfort with gun culture in the United States, particularly here in Louisiana. “There was a curiosity towards the weapon itself,” she said, “like I have to accept that there will be guns around me if I’m going to keep living here. And for me, the easiest way to understand it is through hunting.”

[Read our story about the advocacy of chef and huntress Victoria Loomis here.]

But when she discovered a female friend of hers was an avid hunter, that curiosity evolved to an interrogation of gender: women and the weapon, women and hunting. “My questions were, ‘Why am I surprised to discover a woman hunting?’; ‘Why aren’t there more women hunting?’; Why is that visual representation missing?’” She set out to articulate the intricacies of women and their relationships with death, with men, and with nature.

“These women, as women who hunt, they have to carry a lot of different identities. They have to create a place to be accepted in many different ways. They have to defend themselves in our male-dominated world, while sometimes being a mother figure. They are able to have grief for the animal, for the lost life, but also get their shit together and bring the food back home to their family. People say, girls—she would never kill something. I hope to show it's possible to be all these things."

Over the past five years, Lenain has sought out women in Louisiana and France who have developed hunting practices on their own, with their partners, or with other groups of women. She’s accompanied them in the blind, in the stand, and in the boat, and captured them in portraits that recall the mythic, powerful role of the huntress across history.

[Read our story about the evolution of deer hunting here.]

Jennifer, a teenager of Indigenous and French roots, standing beneath a bridge in Bunkie in full camo, with eye paint—her gun braced across her body. She told Lenain that she is the only girl she knows who hunts.

Esmé, a young girl on her first duck hunt with her father, embraced by her older sister as she looks out towards the sunrise.

Aurelie, holding you in her fierce gaze, wearing a white tank top, her gun held open over her shoulder.

The blood of a bullet hole in a gator's head, complimented by a shiny red fingernail. 

The portraits, Lenain explained, represent her reinvention of the world. In this world, women are the faces of the hunt. In this world, they have the power.

Through recorded interviews, against background noises of chirping birds and whooshing winds, Lenain draws  personal oral histories out of the challenges and victories of being a woman hunter in today’s world. These are presented within the cocoon-like environs of two “blind” installations—one indoor and one outdoor—at NUNU. Inside, the audio plays over game cam footage: a woman describing how when she was a child, she had been allowed to join her daddy at the camp. How, when her body started to change, everything else did, too. “The hunting camp is for the men,” they’d tell her. “It’s not a place for ladies.”  Another woman describes how the hunt offered her a sense of control, of power over her own destiny, after a devastating accident. Another tells of how sitting in the woods, waiting, she feels close to her ancestors. A gator hunter describes the way, when hunting with a group of women, the newest, most inexperienced hunter is pushed to the front—given the best opportunity for the kill.

Valerie, who says she is one of the only Black women hunters she knows, tells of one of her most memorable kills: “I was, like, so excited. I called my mom, put her on Facetime, and I was like ‘Look what I just did, girl!’”

“These women, as women who hunt, they have to carry a lot of different identities,” said Lenain. "They have to create a place to be accepted in many different ways. They have to defend themselves in our male-dominated world, while sometimes being a mother figure. They are able to have grief for the animal, for the lost life, but also get their shit together and bring the food back home to their family. People say, girls—she would never kill something. I hope to show it's possible to be all these things."

A collective experience Lenain observed as she encountered these women across continents was that of realizing, through hunting, one’s own power—especially after pivotal, challenging moments of life. “Often when you’re going through something intense, and you start questioning ‘Who owns the power? Who gives me the power?’” This is the moment when many women realized they could do it on their own, they could embrace the role of huntress. “You can carry a gun, you know how to shoot it. It’s a switch in the head. ‘Am I relying on men to give me this power, or can I give it to myself?’” 

See Sisters of the Hunt / Soeurs de la Chasse on display at NUNU Arts & Culture Collective in Arnaudville through May 26. There will be a screening of Lenain’s associated film The Waiting on May 17 with a panel featuring eight huntresses moderated by this writer. A closing event will take place on May 18, featuring live music and refreshments.  See more of Lenain’s work at camillelenain.com.