A picture is worth a thousand words. The expression has become so overused that it has become commonplace, but it remains that this is what inspires this new collection dedicated to the Stock Photo Agency, which is also entitled to an exhibition at World Press Photo this year. Through all the best shots from this Quebec photojournalism agency that ceased its activities in 2017, it is also the entire history of Quebec that is told.
This was also the intention of artistic director Jocelyne Fournel and photographer Sophie Bertrand, who directed this collection entitled Stock Photo Agency. A History of PhotojournalismFor this book, they went through a catalog of tens of thousands of photos taken between the agency’s founding in 1987 and its closure in 2017. They settled on a hundred or so striking images that, according to them, spoke for themselves.
“What we wanted was to choose photos of the same event that were taken by different photographers from the agency and to have them interact with each other. We didn’t want to present just one perspective of a historical event. For the referendum, for example, we wanted to choose images from photographers who had covered both sides,” illustrates Sophie Bertrand.
In addition to the 1995 referendum, the selected photos allow us to revisit other key moments in Quebec’s recent history, such as the Maple Spring or the Oka Crisis. The photos of Quebec’s Far North by Robert Fréchette, one of the agency’s founders, also offer a unique look at the ancestral traditions of the people who live there.
Some of these photos were purchased by major Quebec newspapers or magazines and became iconic. Others were less widely circulated even though they were just as impactful. Perhaps it is because they immortalize a disturbing, even inglorious, reality?
Consider this disturbing photo immortalized by Horacio Paone in Châteauguay during the Oka Crisis. It shows demonstrators burning puppets representing Mohawks to protest the blocking of the Honoré-Mercier Bridge by Kahnawake residents. This black and white photo is strangely reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan meetings around burning crosses. “It’s one of the photos that left the biggest impression on me,” confides Sophie Bertrand, who was a photographer for Agence Stock.
It’s hard to make your place
Agence Stock was founded in 1987 by three young photographers: Robert Fréchette, Jean-François LeBlanc and Martin Roy. Over the years, different photographers joined the collective, which for 30 years supplied the Quebec media with its coverage of major events, both here and abroad. Due to a lack of successors, Agence Stock ceased to exist in 2017.
Photojournalism has evolved a lot over the past 30 years. The crisis in the written press has certainly had consequences on the profession, as the number of publications has decreased. There are therefore fewer places to showcase your work as a photojournalist.
But paradoxically, in the era of social networks, society has never given so much importance to image. And this inevitably affects the major media. “Before, in a news magazine, the text took precedence. Now, it is not uncommon to see that the visual takes up as much space as the text,” observes Jocelyne Fournel, who was artistic director of the magazine for several years. The News.
Except that since the advent of the mobile phone, anyone who witnesses a slightly spectacular event can improvise as a photographer. Photojournalists, often freelancers, compete not only among themselves to sell their images to newspapers and magazines, but also with Mr. and Mrs. Average People.
“To survive in Quebec, photojournalists have no choice but to take on corporate contracts on the side. It’s always been a difficult environment, but it’s probably even more so. At the beginning of Agence Stock, there were probably only about fifteen photojournalists in Quebec. In this sense, the era of Agence Stock represents a bit of the golden age of photojournalism in Quebec,” summarizes Sophie Bertrand.