Words: Harrison Gordon. Photos and Captions: Oli Gagnon 2021-01-25 18:21:32
Blake Paul, Mike Ravelson, Pat Moore and Arthur Longo hiking into the backcountry surrounding Brighton Resort, UT. We were going out to build some jumps or something like that, en route to stack some shots for Vans Snow’s Evergreen. Although I traveled the world with Oli Gagnon for the better part of a decade, I knew his work long before that. As a young snowboard fan in the late ’90s, I would study magazines meticulously and memorize not only the tricks, riders and captions, but the photographer’s names as well. Oli’s work always stood out, and his name was burned into my subconsciousness from the start. Oli was born in 1981 and grew up in Loretteville, QC. He was hired by Snowboarder Magazine about 2002 and has been snapping photos for the best snowboarding magazines and brands ever since, most recently as a Vans staffer. He’s French Canadian but has pretty much lost his accent because he’s lived in British Columbia for about two decades. When he isn’t snowboarding or shooting snowboarding, you can usually find him working on his house in Squamish, skating the skatepark or some curb spot in Vancouver, riding motorcycles to destinations unknown, or playing sludge metal with his band Hoopsnake. Right about the same time I was sponsored by Salomon in the late 2000s, Oli was hired as the staff photographer. We became friends almost immediately. He is unassuming, hilarious, smart, loyal and caring. He speaks his mind and stays true to his beliefs, as we all should aspire to do. There is not a pretentious bone in his body, which, in my experience, is a rare trait among professional photographers and cinematographers. Maybe that’s because Oli is still, to this day, 100 percent a snowboarder. He hasn’t moved on to do commercial work for questionable brands; he hasn’t exclusively attached himself to the hip of the ultra-Olympic or X-Games-type athletes and he hasn’t forgotten what it was that made him fall in love with snowboarding all those years ago in the biting cold of Quebec. Oli still absolutely rips. Take a day at Quebec City’s famous Red Ledge five or six years ago, for instance. We’d been out in the cold for hours with Jed Anderson, Frank April and Jake Kuzyk, shooting until everyone had something in the bag. Except Oli, that is. When everyone finished riding, he had a solo session as we all watched in amazement. It took him a dozen or so attempts, but Oli was victorious, boardsliding the beast with sparks flying just past sunset. He continues to charge into his late 30s—watch his video part from 2017, self-produced by mostly hitting spots after the rest of the crew was done, and you’ll see. Oli’s love of snowboarding is mirrored by his love for photography. The images of his subjects smiling candidly are just as compelling as his shots of them dropping lines in Alaska or back-lipping quadruple kinks in Russia. He’s devoted his life to documenting all aspects of our lifestyle, from the mountain to the streets, and it shows. Oli’s imagery is honest, impactful and timeless—just like the man himself.
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