“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us”.

- Joseph Campbell   

My name is François Giroux, and photography entered my life at a moment when I needed it most.

For 35 years I worked as an art director in advertising, eventually becoming VP and Creative Director at a medium-size agency. I worked on several tourism accounts around Atlantic Canada and for large packaged good brands. That world was built around planning, strategy, and carefully crafted ideas. Art photography offers me something very different — a quieter, more intuitive way of seeing.

I live with a rare genetic condition called Fabry disease, which forced me into early retirement from agency life in 2019. Around that time, I began a simple personal project called Bike Rides on the Marsh, combining cycling with photographing the landscape of the Tantramar Marshes. At first it was just a way to stay active and clear my mind. Slowly it became something more meaningful.

In the years that followed, my health journey led to both a heart transplant and a kidney transplant. During those difficult periods, photography became part of my healing. It gave me a goal, a reason to move through the landscape, and a creative challenge that helped me focus on what lay ahead rather than what was behind.

My photographs are guided by feeling more than by plan. I’m not tied to a particular style or format; I photograph what the landscape reveals in the moment, scenes that I believe are worth preserving. Often that means returning to the same places again and again, watching how light, weather, and season transform them.

Today, photography continues to be a source of curiosity, gratitude, and renewal in my life. Each image is a quiet reflection of that journey — moments of light, place,
and presence that I’m grateful to have witnessed and happy to share with you.

fg