In the media world, everyone knows Jacques Nadeau. In 46 years of career, the legendary photographer of Duty will have been a privileged witness to numerous events which marked the news, in Quebec as elsewhere. The older ones passed in front of his lens. This shows how this old timer is never short of anecdotes. Like the time he was crushed by an SPVM cavalry horse during a student demonstration in 2012. On many occasions, he risked his life to have the best shot possible. He deserved his retirement. He intends to take advantage of it, slow down the pace a little, but this eternal enthusiast will never hang up his camera.
“I’m not someone who likes nostalgia. I don’t particularly like talking about my memories. When people ask me what my best photo of my career is, I never know what to answer. I haven’t taken my best photo yet,” says the young retiree, who is considering book projects for the coming months.
In interview in the offices of Duty, the daily newspaper that he has just left after spending more than thirty years there, Jacques Nadeau was indeed struggling to determine THE photo of which he was most proud. However, he was spoiled for choice. Some of his images have marked the collective imagination. Just think of this resident of CHSLD Herron whom he immortalized during the first confinement, her hand glued to her window as if she were a prisoner of this establishment which had hit the headlines for the pitiful living conditions of its residents.
And then there are all the photos he took of René Lévesque at the start of his career. The one where René Lévesque embraces Félix Leclerc on the eve of the 1980 referendum. The one where he delivers his defeat speech a few days later, with his wife, Corinne Côté-Lévesque, and Lise Payette at his side. Or the one where the former PQ prime minister, cigarette in his mouth, plays billiards in a tavern, surrounded by workers.
“When René Lévesque decided to play billiards, there was nothing scripted about it. René Lévesque was the opposite of politicians who put on a show to look good. Today, they no longer take risks. Photographers are told: “You have two minutes to take photos and you leave.” At the time, a press officer or a bodyguard never said that to us. We were completely free,” recalls Jacques Nadeau, worried about the future of press freedom.
Marked by René Lévesque
When the Parti Québécois took power in 1976, Jacques Nadeau had just abandoned his studies in journalism at the Media Art and Technology (ATM) program at the Cégep de Jonquière.
He had flown with his camera to San Francisco, at the time the Mecca for all thrill-seeking young Americans eager to break with the established order.
“The hippie movement didn’t interest me at all. What interested me was the world. San Francisco was probably the most multicultural place on the planet, whereas what I was used to until then was very French-Canadian. This is where I learned to observe people. It’s the basis of the photographer’s profession,” he says.
When he returned to Quebec, La Presse canadienne, the country’s main news agency, quickly hired him as a photojournalist at the National Assembly. The arrival of the separatists in government had galvanized the interest of the English Canadian media in Quebec politics. Demand for his photos was high.
“I stayed there until the election of Robert Bourassa. Starting to photograph Bourassa, when you met Lévesque, interested me a lot less, let’s admit,” he confesses, revealing a slightly mocking smile.
Translate the emotion
Jacques Nadeau does not like technocrats. What makes him tick, in his profession, is succeeding in capturing the soul, the emotion, the feeling. This is always what he strived to seek behind his lens. “For me, it’s not the Kodak that makes me tripit is the interest for the other”, summarizes-
he. For someone who taught journalism for a long time in the Department of Communication at the University of Montreal, “a photo doesn’t just have to be beautiful, it has to be good.”
“When you walk into a room and you feel something, you have to be able to convey that emotion in your photo. During the 1995 referendum, for example, it was obvious that Mario Dumont, Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard were not capable of feeling each other. In front of the Kodaks, they were sure to smile as if everything was fine. But my role was to go and find the shot which would translate all the discomfort I felt when I saw them together,” he explains.
To capture the best possible shot, Jacques Nadeau often put himself in danger. He knows tear gas and baton blows, having made demonstrations his specialty. Jacques Nadeau has long thrived on strong emotions, sometimes excess, in his profession as in his personal life.
It had its ups and downs. Like in 2015, when he had all the hard drives that contained his archives stolen from his home during his absence. Thousands of photos have disappeared. Nearly ten years later, he says he knows who did it, but he refuses to talk about it. The wound is still too raw.
At 70, Jacques Nadeau aspires to a more peaceful life. He no longer feels this constant need to prove himself to himself. The death two years ago of his brother Michel Nadeau, former journalist at Duty and pillar of Quebec inc., abruptly reminded him that life was fragile.
Retirement is therefore coming at the right time. “Photojournalism in a daily newspaper is over. It’s behind me. I am at peace with my decision. But the photo is not finished,” he warns with as much evident passion as ever.