Before devoting himself full time to documentary photography in 2008, Michel Huneault worked for over ten years in the international development and humanitarian field, a profession that took him to over twenty countries, including one full year spent in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Michel holds a MA in Latin American Studies from UC Berkeley, researching on the role of collective memory in large-scale traumatic recovery. At Berkeley, he was a student and assistant of Magnum photographer Gilles Peress, and afterwards held an apprenticeship position with him in New York. Currently, his practice focuses on development and humanitarian related issues, on personal and collective traumas, and on complex geographies. His body of work, often mixing photography with audio/video elements, includes work created in Canada (Lac-Mégantic), Japan (Tohoku), Haiti (Port-au-Prince) and across Europe during the 2015 migratory crisis. His work has been shown in various venues in Canada, France, UK, USA and the Netherlands. Michel is a regular grantee of the Quebec and Canada Arts Council, and he won in 2015 the prestigious Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor prize for his long-term work on Lac-Mégantic.