A photograph is always a record of a relationship… The picture is then merely the starting point.

– Susan Meiselas

Canadian/French/Chinese
Based in Paris, France
Available for commissions & assignments

Jennifer Chan is a Chinese Canadian and French documentary photographer based in Paris. After her Bachelor’s degree in business in Hong Kong, she studied at HEC (Hautes Etudes Commerciales) in France and worked as a trader and Financial Controller in Japan before pursuing research in the US. She graduated with a doctorate in international development at Stanford University in 2001 and completed her postdoc at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in 2006. During her career as an academic in Vancouver, Canada, she published widely on the subjects of human rights, social movements, AIDS activism, global public health, and migration.

In 2007, she graduated from the Independent Filmmaking Program at the Gulf Island Film and Television School in Canada, and received the top Outstanding Achievement in Film Award at the Eyelens Festival as producer and director of her animated film, Day of Shame, about US military occupation in Okinawa. The following year, she completed a Black and White Photography course at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Read More

Selected Works


Fragments of War

I’d told you something forgottenthat which can’t be recalled not even tomorrowForgetfulness grows ever older when silence travels. 
– Jeton Kelmendi, Under the Shade of Memory

In the breakup of former Yugoslavia in 1991-2001, over 130,000 people were killed and more than 10,000 disappeared. Using visual storytelling, this project explores the legacy of war in the Western Balkans through themes of loss, grief, displacement, identity, nationalism, social healing, justice, and reconciliation. Read more

Projects


All Content © 2023 by Jennifer Chan