Award-winning French photojournalist Juliette Pavy is showcasing forty powerful photographs that document the alarming effects of mercury contamination on Inuit populations in Greenland and Canada. Her exhibition "Under the Arctic Ice, Mercury" is currently on display at Le Kiosque cultural center in Vannes, Brittany, running from October 3 through November 23, 2025.
Payy, who made history in 2024 as the first French photographer to be named Photographer of the Year at the Sony World Photography Awards, presents a stark warning about the global mercury crisis. "The situation is alarming," she explains. "Over the past 150 years, since the industrial revolution and the construction of coal-fired power plants, mercury emissions have increased tenfold worldwide." Mercury, which has been banned in France since 1999, poses severe health risks to humans, causing toxic effects on the nervous, immune, and digestive systems while promoting cardiovascular disease and affecting fetal development in pregnant women.
The Vannes-born photographer specifically sought out locations and populations most exposed to mercury contamination, identifying Greenland and Nunavut, a Canadian territory, as the most severely affected areas. "When mercury is released from coal-fired power plants, it takes only one week to reach the Arctic," Pavy explains. "It gets caught in prevailing winds and becomes trapped under the ice." As climate change accelerates ice melting, this trapped mercury is released into rivers and soil, creating a dangerous environmental cycle.
"The frozen lands of the Arctic are the world's largest mercury reserves," Pavy notes. After conducting extensive research in Germany to understand how coal-fired power plants operate, she traveled to these remote regions to meet with Inuit communities directly affected by mercury contamination. "I spent enormous amounts of time with them, whether with families, fishermen, or hunters," she recalls. "I wanted to see the real impact of mercury on the landscapes, animals, and inhabitants."
The contamination has created a devastating public health crisis among Indigenous populations. "Inuit people have mercury levels eight times higher than other Canadian populations," Pavy reveals. The mercury works its way through the food chain, contaminating the fish, livestock, and rare cultivated plants that form the foundation of Inuit diets. This creates an impossible situation for these communities, as hunting and fishing remain essential for survival due to the prohibitively expensive cost of importing food to these remote regions. "For them, these activities are fundamental – it's a matter of survival," Pavy emphasizes.
From hundreds of photographs taken during her extensive fieldwork, Pavy, who is also trained in biology, carefully selected forty images that capture both the beauty and tragedy of these affected communities. "It wasn't easy to select so few to tell these stories," she admits. "I was determined that they inform the public, that they be aesthetically compelling, and that they capture the reality of the people and landscapes." The selection process was developed in collaboration with seven other photographers from the Hors Format collective, of which Pavy is a member.
The exhibition represents a deeply personal homecoming for the internationally recognized photographer. "It's important for me to return to Vannes, since my family and friends are here," she shares. "I'm very attached to certain places like the great beach of Carnac or the wild coast of Quiberon. It feels good to come back." Having recently returned from assignments in Greenland and aboard the flotilla bound for Gaza, Pavy is temporarily stepping away from "action and production" to focus on "transmitting these stories and these lives" from Nunavut. The free exhibition at Le Kiosque in Vannes offers visitors a powerful glimpse into one of the Arctic's most pressing environmental and human rights crises, remaining open through November 23.
