Kourtney Roy in Two Minutes

Where are you from?

The wilderness of Northern Ontario, Canada

When did you realise you could make a living from your photography?

I started to get an inkling of this possibility in university where I was studying art. I started to assist some local photographers and I realized that you could also earn a living doing commercial work as well. When I moved to Paris I started working as an assistant in a photo studio that specialized in fashion and advertising and I learned this sort of work as well while I was developing my artistic practice.

What influences your practice?

Films! I usually try to watch 1 film a day. I go mad for taking screen shots. There is something so fascinating and infinitely poetic about freezing motion in the cinema. All sorts of unseen details spring up to the eye that you might have missed. I am on a film noir streak at the moment. I love the complex compositions and dramatic lighting. (I just finished watching This Gun For Hire (1942) directed by Frank Tuttle)

Five words that sum up your practice?

Cinematic, trashy, uncanny, dark, irreal

What is/was an important image for you?

That’s a pretty tough question. I would have to say a seminal image in my development has been Jeff Wall’s The Flooded Grave, 1998-2000. It was his unsettling balance of the banal and the marvellous that moved me. It showed me that highly constructed images could appear to be improvised, or accidental.

The company that you keep: When you google ‘Kourtney Roy’, the web tells us that “people also search for …” Henry Clarke, Cindy Sherman, Saul Leiter, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin. How do you feel about being in their company?

Feels pretty good! Although that is pretty high company, I am just a humble servant to my imagination and wine. I won’t delude myself into thinking I am as grand as they are.

Perfect dinner party guests (dead or alive)?

Bukowski, Nancy Wake, Françoise Sagan, Céline, Carravaggio, Jon Stewart and my granny.

Book on your bedside table?

The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel and The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

What advice would you give your 16 year old self?

Don’t be so bloody overconfident.

Sleep with more men.