Quebec photographer wins World Press Photo award
Posted April 3, 2024 4:07 pm.
Last Updated April 3, 2024 4:13 pm.
For the first time in 25 years, a Quebecer has won the prestigious World Press Photo photography competition.
Documentary photographer Charles-Frédérick Ouellet is one of the winners in the North and Central America region, in the “single images” category.
The World Press Photo Montreal Expo team made the announcement on Wednesday.
It said that the World Press Photo Foundation had chosen the Quebecer for a photograph taken during the forest fires in Quebec in the summer of 2023. The black-and-white photo, showing an auxiliary fighter, had been published in “The Globe and Mail”.
The photograph is entitled “A Day in the Life of a Quebec Fire Crew”. It shows Théo Dagnaud scanning the horizon at the very end of a patrol, to make sure that no smoke is visible on the horizon.
“This image resonates like a long silence, far from the world of human beings. It evokes that moment when we realise that we are an integral part of the ecosystem, that our survival depends on our understanding of nature,” commented Ouellet in a press release.
The photo will be presented at the World Press Photo Montreal Expo at Bonsecours Market from 28 August to 14 October, as well as in the cities where the exhibition will be making stops throughout 2024.
The Montreal team recalls that in 1999 Roger Lemoyne was the first Quebecer to win a prize in the international photography competition.
-This article was translated from La Presse Canadienne by CityNews
