Kourtney Roy’s studies in photography, at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and later at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, inspired her to develop her finicky aesthetic, which lends itself particularly well to both glossy paper and film. Roy works extensively as an independent photographer/filmmaker in the art world, as well as the advertising world of print and video. Instilled with a dark sense of humour, taking their clues as much from the grotesque nature of seemingly placid settings as from the tensions simmering just under the surface, her photographs have garnered many prizes and grants, including the Prix Picto in 2007, the Emily Award ECUAD in 2012, the Prix Carte Blanche PMU/Le Bal in 2013 and Pernod Ricard’s prestigious Carte Blanche in 2018. She was also chosen as a recipient for a grant from the French National Center of the Arts (2018) and the National Library of France photographic commission 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 abroad. She has been seen at the 2012 Festival Planche(s) Contact in Deauville, at Le Bal, Paris in 2014, the Portraits Festival in Vichy in 2015 and 2022, Les Rencontres d'Arles (2025), among other venues. In 2018 she was granted a solo show at Paris Photo as part of the Pernod Ricard Carte Blanche Award. Internationally Roy’s photographs have been featured at exhibitions in China, Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, the UK, Lichtenstein, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Russia and Spain.

Roy has also released several publications of her work, including ILS PENSENT DEJA QUE JE SUIS FOLLE and ENTER AS FICTION, both published by Filigrane Editions, as well as NORTHERN NOIR, published by Editions La Pionnière. CALIFORNIA is edited by Editions Louis Vuitton and was released in 2016. THE TOURIST, published by André Frérè Editions, was released in November 2020. In 2022 she released three new books, THE OTHER END OF THE RAINBOW (André Frére Editions), SURVIVALIST FAILURES (Filigrane Editions), and QUEEN OF NOWHERE (Iikki Books).