Agence Stock Photo: Une histoire du photojournalisme au Québec

Alan Bulley
Jul 6
2 min read

Quebec’s distinctness surfaces repeatedly in a recently released photobook outlining the history of the now-defunct Agence Stock Photo, a collective of photojournalists working in the province between 1987 and 2017.

The group loosely modelled themselves on Magnum, the famous agency founded to give photographers greater control over both the subjects they covered and the use of their photographs. Quebec news outlets published the lion’s share of Stock Photo’s images, with the remainder in other markets across la Francophonie, including France and Haiti.

While the text is entirely in French, the photo-to-text ratio is quite high, meaning that those who do not read French well—or at all—can still benefit from the book. If anything, it might have been helpful to have more written on Agence Stock Photo itself, as well as the day-to-day realities and challenges of the photographers, both individually and as a collective. The interviews with the key figures in the collective are interesting and it would have been nice to have more of these documented. Still, for a volume that Le Devoir called a history of the “golden age of photojournalism in Quebec,” perhaps no book would have been quite long enough.

Readers get insights into a recent past that already feels a little distant. It’s not just the number of photographs shot on film, or that cars, clothes, and hairstyles have changed.

It’s the reality that newspapers themselves are under threat, the media landscape is in the hands of fewer and fewer players, and there are not as many photographers hired solely to provide news coverage.

We’re now used to an environment where ‘citizen journalists’ work for little or no pay, and who often have neither recognized training nor standards.

So, step back in time to professional reporting of key events and shifts in the Quebec of not so long ago. Some of the ground covered will be familiar to readers in the rest of Canada, while some will be a glimpse into political and societal terrain that is uniquely Québécois.

Bonne lecture !

Agence Stock Photo : Une histoire du photojournalisme au Québec

— Sophie Bertrand et Jocelyne Fournel

Softcover, 2024, 200 pages, French text

CDN $54.95 plus shipping

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