Quebec documentary photographer Charles-Frédérick Ouellet, freelance at Duty, is one of the winners of the 2024 edition of the World Press Photo competition. This is the first time in 25 years that a Quebecer has been included in the prestigious list, whose winners in the regional categories were revealed this Wednesday in Amsterdam.
Ouellet stood out in the Unique Images category, North and Central America section, which rewards the best photo taken in 2023 for this region, all genres combined.
The winning photo shows auxiliary firefighter Théo Dagnaud, standing on a rock and scanning the horizon to ensure there is no smoke, while forest fires in Quebec reached unprecedented scale last summer. The black and white photo was produced with the support of Globe and Mail and the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec.
“It’s really quite an honor,” says the main person involved. “I was the only Quebecer who had access [aux] fire grounds,” he says, allowing him to offer a unique perspective of the fires, “without being caught in the little media bubble” on the periphery. Before covering the events, he had to complete training and obtain authorization from the Society for the Protection of Forests Against Fire (SOPFEU), which gave him privileged access to the territory.
The 67e competition organized by the World Press Photo Foundation rewards 24 photographers in regional sections and four on a global scale. These will be announced on April 18. In total, some 61,000 photos were submitted by 3,851 photographers from 130 countries who took part in the competition.
The World Press Photo exhibition will travel to dozens of cities around the world from the end of April and will stop in Montreal, at the Bonsecours market, from August 28 to October 14.
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