Always with an eye on humanitarian issues, Benoit Aquin has created important photographic essays on subjects like the pesticide crimes of Nicaragua, the melting ice floes of the Canadian Great North and the drastic desertification of China.
For 12 years, from 1989 to 2001, Benoit Aquin worked as staff photographer for Montreal alternative news weeklies Voir and Hour, for which he shot countless cover portraits and covered the Montreal urban beat as a photo-reporter. From 2000 to 2004, he worked as staff photographer for Quebec’s most widely distributed independent magazine, Recto Verso, for which he photographed news stories in Mexico, at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, and on subjects like workers’ abuse and more.
As an independent artist, he has published his photographs in many magazines including Macleans, Canadian Geographic, Time, Wired, L’Actualité, Recto Verso and En Route. He has also been published in newspapers including The Globe & Mail and La Presse, and has created projects for both the CBC and Agence Cossette.
Aquin has exhibited in various galleries throughout Canada, including the Musée du Québec (Quebec City), the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (Ottawa), Galerie Occurrence (Montreal), l’Écomusée du fier monde (Montréal), within the Mois de la photo (Montreal), and most recently, in the Habitation exhibition at Galerie Vu (Quebec City). His works are part of the permanent collections of both the Musée du Québec and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
In 1996, Benoit Aquin was awarded the Grand Prix, the Prix du Jury and the Prix Le Soleil in the Regards du Québec competition. In 2001 he received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to develop his series of portraits of Montreal sex workers. In 2006, he was a finalist in the Lux competition and was recipient of a special mention.
In 2004, Benoit Aquin was invited to participate in the documentary series Phôtos — Une quête de la lumière et de ce que nous sommes, aired on ArtTV and TV5, in which he was filmed while hard at work on his desert, hunting and sex workers series. That same year Benoit Aquin was featured by the CBC on Country Canada, where he was one of three featured photographers interested in the loss of rural life.
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