Kourtney Roy is a Canadian artist and filmmaker whose work constructs meticulously staged, surreal worlds that hover between fiction, performance, and psychological tension. Educated in photography at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and later at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Roy developed a distinctive visual language early on-one that is cinematic playful, and charged with an underlying sense of unease. Often positioning herself as the protagonist within these constructed environments, her images resemble stills from mysterious films, suspended in moments of narrative ambiguity. Based in Paris, Roy works independently across photography and film, using both mediums to build visually striking environments infused with a dark, deadpan sense of humour. Her practice is rooted in staging and artifice: carefully chosen locations, saturated colour palettes, and deliberate compositions create uncanny worlds. Motels, deserts, suburban interiors, highways, and liminal spaces recur throughout her work- spaces where time seems elastic and reality disturbingly off-kilter. Roy’s photographs frequently depict isolated figures- characters she constructs and inhabits- navigating these environments, where meaning is held in suspension. Rather than offering clear narratives, her work invites projection and interpretation, drawing viewers into atmospheres shaped by tension, ambiguity, and absurdity.

Her photographs have received numerous awards and grants, including the Prix Picto in 2007, the Emily Award ECUAD in 2012, the Prix Carte Blanche PMU/Le Bal in 2013, Pernod Ricard’s prestigious Carte Blanche in 2018 and the Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains (2024). She has also received a grant from the French National Centre of the Arts in 2018 and was among the laureates of the Grande Commande Photographique of the French Ministry of Culture – Radioscopie de la France in 2022.
In 2020 her photo book, THE OTHER END OF THE RAINBOW won the special mention for the Luma Rencontre Dummy Book Award, France.
In 2019 she won the best experimental film award at the Brest European Short Film Festival with her dark and dreamy short, MORNING, VEGAS. Her second short, SLICE OF HEAVEN, was premiered at the 2020 Raindance Film Festival in London.
Her first feature film, Kryptic — a time looping creature-feature — was presented at several film festivals following its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

Roy’s work has been exhibited widely in France and internationally. Her exhibitions include Le BAL, Paris (2014), the Portrait(s) festival, Vichy (2015 and 2022), the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2025), the Rencontres d’Arles (2025) and the Citéco, Cité de l’Economie, Paris (2026). Her photographs have also been shown throughout Europe, as well as in China, the United States, Australia and Russia.

Roy has published several monographs of her work, including ls pensent déjà que je suis folle e Enter as Fiction (Filigrane Editions, 2014, 2015), Northern Noir (Éditions La Pionnière, 2016), California (Éditions Louis Vuitton, 2016), The Tourist (André Frère Éditions, 2020), The Other End of the Rainbow (André Frère Éditions, 2022), Survivalist Failures (Filigrane Editions, 2022), Queen of Nowhere (Iikki Books, 2022), Failed postcards from Napoli (André Frère Éditions, 2025).

Her works are included in the permanent collections of the Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, Les Rencontres d’Arles, the Château d’Eau in Toulouse, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, , among others, as well as in numerous private collections.