Born in 1978, Valerian Mazataud is a french freelance visual journalist based in Montreal, Canada, and working with such media as Le Devoir, La Presse, l’Actualite or Wostok Press.
He is mainly interested in social justice, minorities, human rights and international stories and has covered some of the major events of the past few years, from the Haitian earthquake to the drought in Africa, through the arab spring.
He owns a masters degree in agriculture and marine sciences and has been working as a marine biologist, a scuba instructor, a clown and a science educator. He has also traveled around the world by bicycle, during a 16 months and 21000 km trip.
He has been named best upcoming journalist and photojournalist in 2011 by the two main Quebec journalist associations. His pictures have been showed in Paris, Montreal and Toronto and were featured during the 2011 edition of the Quebec photojournalism Zoom festival.