Antoine Desilets

Antoine Desilets (15 September 1927 – 19 December 2019) was a Québécois photographer. He is known as the father of photojournalism in Quebec.

Biography

Early life Jean Marcel Antoine Desilets was born on 15 September 1927 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to Jean Sévère Desilets, a carpenter, and Cécile Dalpé. He was baptized on 18 September, and had his confirmation on 24 April by Monseigneur J.A Langlois.

His mother died in 1935, and his father grew unable to support the family financially. At age 9, He obtained his secondary education in an English school of the Greater Montreal area.

Desilets left the orphanage and worked under Hans Selye at McGill University. Uninterested with Selye's laboratory work, he instead enrolled in correspondence photography courses. By 18 years old, he had enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was trained as an aerial photographer, Desilets worked for Canadair while doing freelance contracts. He was fired after borrowing the company's Leica camera for outside work against company regulations. in 1961. During the summer break, he filled in for photographers of the coloured supplement for an important report. The supplement's director, Serge Larochelle, was impressed with the quality of Desilets's photographs and hired him. In 1969, Desilets was assigned to the newspaper's daily coverage, much to his dissatisfaction.

Desilets resigned from La Presse in 1974 to join Le Jour. The newspaper's pro-independence position aligned with Desilets's politics. It ceased operations in 1976.

Between 1976 and 1979, Desilets taught photography at CESTI's school of Dakar University, Senegal for the federal government. In 1981 he worked for the magazine Photo Sélection. He then went into semi-retirement as a freelancer.

Later life Desilets died on 19 December 2019. By then, he was known as the father of photojournalism in Québec. He had six children, including Luc Desilets.

Awards

1963, 1965 : Association des photographes de presse de Montréal, Best Photographer of the Year 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969 : National Press Photographers Association of North America, Best Photographer of the Year (Canada and New York section) 1970 : First Prize for architectural photography for the Association des photographes professionnels du Canada 1982 : First Prize of the Photography Museum of Paris 1990 : Knight of the Order of Quebec