Kourtney Roy
A selection from various series
Kourtney Roy shoots stylized self-portraits, which look like movie stills from a fictional film noir set in rural suburbia. Roy’s cinematic influences, e.g. director Douglas Sirk or the film Don’t Look Now, show in the narrative language of the images. She suggests an undercurrent of horror through the artificial mise-en-scène of her body in otherwise mundane scenes, or directs the camera on overlooked fragments of the landscape to render the quotidian uncanny. Her work questions our common readings and are “a rejection of this nice normal life you’re supposed to lead.”
Although an obvious association would be to Cindy Sherman, the godmother of conceptual self-portraits and role-playing, Roy doesn’t channel any muse or character, but rather neutralizes her looks and expressions. She is interested in the duality of being both the person who objectifies and is objectified, having worked in fashion photography, and playing with all the little visual signs of what it means to be a woman.
Roy’s experience in fashion also clearly informs the impeccable styling of her shoots. In fact, she learned from Guy Bourdin and Miles Aldridge that one can make beautiful, strange little stories and get paid for it. As a big fan of early colorists like Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Fred Herzog, and Joel Sternfeld, her masterful coloration lends the contemporary a retro feel and her work a recognizable signature.