Claire Beaugrand-Champagne (b.1948, Duvernay, Quebec)

In this joyous image, Claire Beaugrand-Champagne (b.1948) portrays a moment of levity and emotional connection between three women as they laugh and gesture together in French class. The photograph is from a larger project about Vietnamese immigration to Montreal, and in many respects it is an exemplar of her practice. As a documentary photographer with a penchant for long-term projects, Beaugrand-Champagne is skillful at capturing revealing details and a sense of personality in her subjects.

Born in Duvernay, Quebec, Beaugrand-Champagne moved to Montreal in the late 1960s to attend CEGEP. One of the founders of OVO Photo magazine in the early 1970s,  Beaugrand-Champagne also joined Groupe d’action photographique (GAP), a collective of socially engaged documentary photographers, soon after its inception in 1972. She also worked as a press photographer, one of few women to do so in 1970s Quebec. With fellow GAP members, including Michel Campeau, she worked on the series Disraeli, une expérience humaine en photographie, 1972–1974, a project documenting everyday life in rural Quebec.

Beaugrand-Champagne develops her projects over time and in dialogue with the communities and people featured in her work. In Thien & Hung, 1980–95, a series created over a fifteen-year period, her deep commitment to her subjects over the longer time frame allows her to document both the familiar images of refugee experience, such as airport arrivals, but also less familiar but resonant scenes from life in a new place. Beaugrand-Champagne’s study of the refugee experience in Canada followed her series on international refugee camps, Les Camps de Réfugiés, 1980, and a multi-year project on the lives of elderly people in the mid-1970s. By developing a deep understanding of her subjects rather than searching for a single summary image, Beaugrand-Champagne makes a substantive contribution to social issues.