about

Kourtney Roy studied photography at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and later at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. These formative years shaped her meticulous visual aesthetic, one that translates seamlessly across photography and film, from glossy print to moving images.

Working independently across the art and advertising worlds, Roy brings a dark sense of humour to her practice, drawing on the grotesque undercurrents of seemingly placid settings and the tensions simmering just beneath the surface. Her photographs have received numerous awards and grants, including the Prix Picto (2007), the Emily Award, ECUAD (2012), the Prix Carte Blanche PMU / Le Bal (2013), Pernod Ricard’s prestigious Carte Blanche (2018), and the Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains (2024). She was also awarded grants from the French National Centre of the Arts in 2018 and the National Library of France photographic commission in 2022.

In 2020, her photobook The Other End of the Rainbow received a special mention at the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award, and went on to win the Prix des Libraires photobook of the year in France in 2023.

Alongside her photographic work, Roy is an accomplished filmmaker. Her short film Morning, Vegas. (2019) was awarded Best Experimental Film at the Brest European Short Film Festival. Her second short, Slice of Heaven, premiered at the 2020 Raindance Film Festival in London. Her debut feature film Kryptic, a time-looping creature feature, had its world premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas in 2024, and screened at major international festivals including Fantasia, Sitges, BIFFF, NIFF, and CUFF. The film has since been released internationally.

Roy’s work has been widely exhibited in France and internationally. In France, her exhibitions include Le Bal in Paris (2014), the Portrait(s) Festival in Vichy (2015 and 2022), and the Jeu de Paume (2025). That same year, she had a solo exhibition at Les Rencontres d’Arles. Internationally, her photographs have been shown in China, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Russia, and Spain. She has also published several monographs of her work.

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