Concordia’s photo exhibit highlights importance of photojournalism in the AI era

Nour Musawi is a Graduate Diploma student in Visual Journalism, who enrolled at Concordia after completing a bachelor’s degree in political science from Université de Montréal.

Musawi’s photo in the exhibit features Mariel Martinez of Ballet Mexicain de Montréal, preparing for her Dia de Los Muertos show, also known as the Day of the Dead in Mexican culture.

With the shooting process taking several hours, Musawi says the story offered range and pushed her to explore different angles and locations for a variety of shots.

“Changing from writing to visual was a learning curve,” Musawi said. “I had to rewire my brain to let the photo tell the story.”

With McInnis’s guidance though, Musawi says she was able to succeed in telling stories through images rather than just words.

“I learned to be more aware of my surroundings and take many different shots of the same photo to see which one conveys the story better. It's been very rewarding,” she said.

“Allen has high standards and wants you to meet them (…) you can always count on him to tell you the truth; he doesn't sugarcoat and that pushes me to always improve and do better.” 

Irène De Grave, a Graduate Diploma student in Visual Journalism with a communications background from Université de Montréal, has been doing photography since she was 14.

For the exhibit, she photographed Simon Coulet of Les Carabins de l’Université de Montréal, the university’s men’s volleyball team. She spent two weeks following the team and documenting their training sessions for several hours at a time.

“It’s not just them playing on the court. It’s also all the moments before and after the trainings, that felt important for me,” she said.

“I wanted to highlight the players individually and capture the moments that make this team special.”

She says McInnis’s class has been one of her favourites in the program.

“This class really pushed me out of my comfort zone, and it’s really what I was looking for,” she said. “Allen’s experience is such a gold mine for us. He always has an anecdote to share when we ask him a question, this helps us learn and retain information much more easily.”

“I feel very lucky to be able to benefit from this expertise and learn more about the profession of photojournalism.”

Esther Chaumont-Goneau, a Graduate Diploma student in Visual Journalism with a bachelor’s degree in environmental Geography from Université de Montréal, captured Hurricane Erin from Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia.

She says she came to the program because of her love of photography but also wanted to learn how to use her images to inform the public.

She says the program did that, and a bit more.

“I have gained a lot of confidence in my skills and have learnt to produce visuals that tell stories. I now already feel much more prepared to enter the professional world of visual journalism,” she said.

“It is easy for me to dream about what a job in photojournalism can offer, but to be able to have someone who has made it his career explain week by week all the challenges and joys that come with it feels extremely helpful to me.”