Leblanc Jean-François
Founder and photographer
Stock Photo
Montreal, QC, Canada
Jean-François Leblanc has dedicated himself to photography since 1982, when he got his Bachelor’s degree in Communications at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. He started his career as a photographer while working for many neighborhood community newspapers in Montreal. In 1984, he became the official photographer of Montreal’s International Jazz Festival, a collaboration that’s still in effect to this day. In 1987, while working full-time for Le Matin, a new Montreal daily, he decided to create Agence Stock Photo, with two other colleagues, also photographers committed to photojournalism.
In 1990, he became a regular collaborator at L’actualité magazine, Quebec’s most important information magazine. The same year, he got assigned to a mission in Haiti by the Canadian International Development Agency, and got hired by the Cirque du Soleil, where he spent three consecutive years producing the photos presented in the official show program.
Jean-François Leblanc’s work has been published in most important Quebec dailies and magazines, as well as in international publications such as Le Monde, L'Express, Le Point, Libération, Géo, Photo, Photo-Reporter, Saturday Night, Jazz Time and Canadian Geographic. He traveled to Latin America (Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela), to Morocco, to Europe (France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands), to Palestine and Israel and more recently to South-East Asia (Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia) and to China.
The recipient of many grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, he has presented, since 1984, many exhibitions on his personal projects at, among others, the Montreal Maisons de la Culture network, and also during the Mois de la Photo period in Montreal. Abroad, his work was presented in Mexico during the Mes de la Foto in Merida, in over forty Europeans cities through the FNAC galleries network and during the Rencontres Internationales de la Photo d’Arles in France.
