Based in Tadoussac · Quebec
Working since MMVI
Margaux Lavoie Photography
Selected work · 2018 — 2025
Long-form documentary
— Room I · Featured work · MMXXV Plate №01 of 14

Sun at four-eighteen.

— Pangnirtung, Nunavut · March 2024 · from the series Northwest Passage, II

This is the second image I made on the morning of March fourteenth, 2024, in Pangnirtung — a small Inuit community on Baffin Island, on the eastern shore of Cumberland Sound. We had been walking for forty minutes, on a sea-ice trail my host Aimo had used to fish through every winter of his sixty-four years, when the sun cleared the ridge behind us and lit the inlet for the first time that day. The whole event lasted four or five minutes.

I made the picture on a tripod, at one-eighth of a second at f/8, on a 250mm lens. Aimo is the small dark figure in the centre of the frame. The image is the first in the second part of a long-running project on communities along the Northwest Passage — a project I began in 2018, and which I expect to continue, slowly, for the rest of my working life.

— Room II · Selected series · MMXVIII — MMXXV Seven projects

Seven projects. Seven years.

A complete index of long-form photographic work made between 2018 and the present. Most projects are still ongoing — only the first two have been declared finished. I work on roughly three at any given time.

— I.
Northwest Passage (I)Communities along the Northwest Passage, west to east. Finished & published as a book in 2022.
2018 — 2274 plates · monograph 2022
— II.
Northwest Passage (II)A continuation of the first project, returning to communities a decade after my first visit. Ongoing.
2023 —38 plates · in progress
— III.
Quiet Places, after the seasonResort towns and seasonal villages in Quebec and the Maritimes, photographed only out of season. Ongoing.
2019 —92 plates · in progress
— IV.
Vanishing TradesPortraits of the last-generation practitioners of traditional Quebecois trades — coopers, ferriers, shipwrights.
2020 —54 plates · in progress
— V.
Rivers, looking downAerial photographs of Quebec rivers from a fixed altitude, made over four years from a small float plane.
2021 — 2448 plates · finished 2024
— VI.
The Saguenay LightOne subject — the light on the Saguenay fjord — photographed every Sunday for fifty-two weeks.
2024 — 2552 plates · finished spring 2025
— VII.
An InventoryAn ongoing inventory of small museums in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. In its first year.
2025 —14 plates · just begun
— Room III · From the series Quiet Places, after the season Plates №№ 02 — 05
PLATE 02
02 / 92OKA, QC · NOV '23
PLATE 03
03 / 92HARRINGTON, QC · DEC '23
— PL. 02 — 03
Closed for the season I & IIThe Oka Lakefront Inn boarded up for the winter, late November; and the road to the Harrington fishing camp, three weeks later.
★ Diptych · 2023Gelatin silver · 50 × 60cm
Ed. of 6 + 2 AP each
PLATE 04
04 / 92BAIE-COMEAU · FEB '24
PLATE 05
05 / 92RIVIÈRE-MADELEINE · FEB '24
— PL. 04 — 05
Madame Lefebvre, and her son's pierThe proprietor of an out-of-season inn in Baie-Comeau, photographed in her shut kitchen on a Tuesday; and her son's fishing pier, the following morning, after snow.
★ Diptych · 2024Gelatin silver · 50 × 50cm
Ed. of 6 + 2 AP each
— Room IV · From the series Vanishing Trades Plates №№ 06 — 08
PLATE 06
06 / 54ÎLE D'ORLÉANS · '21
PLATE 07
07 / 54LANORAIE · '22
PLATE 08
08 / 54SAINT-JEAN-PORT-JOLI · '22
— PL. 06 — 08
M. Beaulieu, cooper; M. Tremblay, ferrier; M. Boucher, shipwrightThree portraits, made on three consecutive days in the summer of 2022, of the last working practitioners I could find of three trades I am told existed in every Quebec village a century ago. Each made a portrait of me in return, in their own way, with their tools.
★ Triptych · 2021 — 22Gelatin silver · 40 × 50cm each
Ed. of 8 + 2 AP each

— On the work · MMXXV

"I take pictures of things and people I am afraid of losing. I have never been particularly interested in the present moment — what I want is the texture of the world that is about to be gone, photographed slowly enough that I might still recognise it ten years from now."

— Margaux Lavoie, in conversation with Caroline Bélanger

Aperture, no. 248 · Spring 2025

— Room VI · A short biography Margaux Lavoie · b. 1981

★ Margaux Lavoie, in her Tadoussac studio
photograph by Pierre Lemay, 2023

A short biography.

Margaux Lavoie was born in Chicoutimi, Quebec, in 1981, and grew up between Chicoutimi and Sept-Îles. She studied photography at Concordia in Montreal, graduating in 2004, and worked as an editorial assistant at Maisonneuve magazine for six years before making her first photographs full-time, in 2010. She lives and works in Tadoussac, on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence.

Her work has been published in Aperture, The New York Times Magazine, Maisonneuve, and FOAM, and is held in the permanent collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the National Gallery of Canada, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Her first monograph, Northwest Passage, I, was published by Steidl in 2022 and is now in its third printing.

— Selected exhibitions

2025The Saguenay Light, Hauser & Wirth Toronto
2024Aperture Gallery, New York
2023Foam Talent, Amsterdam (selected)
2022Northwest Passage, I, MNBAQ Quebec
2020Galerie Simon Blais, Montreal

— Selected awards & books

2024Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist
2022Northwest Passage, I, Steidl (book)
2021Hasselblad Masters · Documentary
2019Canada Council Senior Artist Grant
2017Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund

— Print sales · representation · enquiries

Working quietly, on the north shore.

I respond personally to every email, usually within a week. Print sales are managed through my representation, Galerie Simon Blais in Montreal. For all other matters — editorial, exhibitions, teaching — please write directly to the studio.

— Direct

studio@margauxlavoie.ca

— Print sales · Montréal

Galerie Simon Blais

— Studio · by appointment

184 rue du Bord-de-l'Eau
Tadoussac, QC