INSPIRATION

Short profile

Kourtney Roy, born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, grew up in a family of truck drivers and loggers. She studied art and photography at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and later at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Today, the 42-year-old, who also calls herself the patron saint of the depraved and downtrodden, works as a freelance photographer and filmmaker in Paris. She has been successful in both the art world and the advertising industry with photography and video. In her photographs and films, which have won numerous awards and grants, seemingly peaceful environments always reveal tensions simmering beneath the surface.

In the interview, she reveals how she came to photography, what inspires her, and how many films she watches a day.

self portrait of Kourtney Roy.

6 QUESTIONS TO KOURTNEY ROY

Can you tell us a little bit about how you became a photographer?

It was by chance that I went into photography. I was in my first year of art school and I was planning on being a painter. There was an elective class on photography that I took in the second semester that introduced me to the medium. It was around that time of year when students who want to get into any of the media programs such as photography need to send in their submissions, as these programs were very limited. I applied on a whim. I went to the interview with no photos in my portfolio, just some bad student paintings, and when the interviewer asked me what I planned to do for the summer I said I had joined a bluegrass jam session, they just smiled at me and two weeks later I was accepted. After art school I moved to Paris where I worked for a year and a half as a photo assistant at a photo studio. I began working as an independent photographer in 2007, which was the debut of a long, dolorous period of penury and crapulence.

two portraits in humoristic and chaotic street photography style with delicate pink accents

Photo: Kourtney Roy

Please share something about your images. What is your special interest? How do you choose the colors, composition, themes etc.?

I always work in color. I have zero interest in making black and white images. I appreciate the work of others who employ B+W, but for me, color has an omnipresent and magical effect on how we see the world. I have a couple of themes threading through my practice- I have created extensively using myself as the subject. When I first started shooting myself it was a way to navigate around issues of representation and appropriation (we were already dialoguing about these issues in art school 20 years ago). But this practice slowly evolved so that placing myself in the image was a way to inhabit the fantasy worlds in my head. Photography became an extension of my imaginary universe, and I began to construct elaborate characters who I would become for the photos. Another fascination of mine is for liminal, vernacular places. I am drawn to in-between spaces such as run down gas stations, dilapidated trailer parks, forgotten rest stops, neglected hotels on lonely highways...

woman with blonde wig in front of face, standing in front of a hedge and beige house.

Photo: Kourtney Roy

Where does this interest come from?  

I suppose part of my interest in these places is that they remind of the landscapes of my childhood. I grew up living with my dad in the wilderness of BC and with my mom in a small town in Northern Ontario and this type of generic, lapsed architecture was commonplace in the vast forests that surrounded us. It is both wonderfully banal and uncanny.

How do you get inspired? And what inspires you the most? Films, books, or magazines? Or what surrounds you?

Cinema is a source of inspiration. I usually watch at least 1 movie a day, sometimes 2 or 3 when I have the time. I love the cinema of Ken Losey, Douglas Sirk, Andrea Arnold, Early Spielberg, Werner Herzog…. I spend A LOT of time taking screenshots, it can be quite frustrating to watch a movie with me because I am always pausing to get a still.

The world around us is also a marvelous place, it has the secret potential to transform itself into a film set at any moment.

photo with red orange curtain and chair with large windows with water view.

Photo: Kourtney Roy

What are your plans for the rest of the day? 

I am on the Eurostar now, hurtling towards London to finish up the post-production on my debut feature film KRYPTO, a psycho-thriller about a woman’s search for a missing monster hunter and the growing realization that she is inescapably linked to the creature being pursued.

What else should we know about you? Please give us a brief profile of yourself.

  • Kourtney Roy

  • 42 years old

  • Born in North Bay, Ontario, Canada to a family of truckdrivers and lumberjacks

  • Lives in Paris, France

  • Photographer and director

  • Patron saint of the depraved and downtrodden

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