Laurence Butet-Roch is a freelance photographer, writer, photo editor and educator. She was nine during the last Quebec referendum. As her parents, staunch separatists, explained the stakes, she imagined La Belle Province becoming an island. The celebratory bottle of champagne was never opened and Laurence began embracing English culture. Existing with a foot in two solitudes, as Hugh MacLennan once wrote, she began exploring the interplay between identity, place and politics. She has spent time with workers in Thetford Mines ahead of the closure of the last remaining Asbestos mine in the country, as well as with residents of Aamjiwnaang First Nation who live surrounded by the densest concentration of petrochemical plants in Canada, Ontario. In the same spirit, she’s also studying Quebec’s distinctive identity politics and surveying resistance movements in rural America. She holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of British Columbia (2007), attended the School of Photographic Arts: Ottawa (2010) and completed a Master of Digital Media at Ryerson University (2016).

See more on her website.