Kourtney Roy is a canadian photographer living in Paris whose work is intriguing, witty, elegant and smart. Hers is also a body of work that grows on you. 

Apart from her fine-art photography, Roy also does fashion photography, and it shows. Hers is a refined world, with stunning wardrobes, glorious lighting, and elaborate poses. She works in color, and her colors are exquisite - more about them later. Yet while the high fashion interest shows, it doesn't dominate her work, it informs it if you will. Yes there is glamour in her shots, but it is far from the only component. 

From Kourtney Roy's "Fixed in no time" seriesBeautiful colours giving an old time feel informed by Eggleston and fashion photography What one also sees is a retro feel. This is achieved by her particular treatment of colour, achieving beautiful, vibrant colors, that nevertheless have a feel of passed colors, giving a slightly old-timey sheen to her pictures. In this, one can trace the influence of William Eggleston, which Roy has identified as an inspiration. But it's not just the colors and lighting, the clothes, general tone and poses tend to remind of decades past (mostly the fifties and sixties). In some ways, one is reminded of the atmosphere of Mad Men. All the beauty and charm of such a time gone by are evoked, yet Roy's pictures are unmistakenably - and unexplainably - contemporary. Maybe it is because by going so far into a retro feel, she manages a singular feat: making her pictures take on a notable twinge of kitsch, yet keeping them slick and elegant. Being able to deliver this apparent contradiction is one of Roy's many achievements.

While Roy's style is what first attracts the eye and makes one want to explore her works - and keeps providing long lasting enjoyment - her subjects are highly intriguing. At first glance, the vignettes she carefully poses seem typical to the decades after which the pictures are styled. They figure different women of different styles - though mostly in one form of glamour or another. But close inspection reveals that these different women are (nearly) all Roy herself, assuming different styles in such a complete From Kourtney Roy's "The ideal woman" seriesWhile the picture is beautiful, the title of the series and the look on Roy's face makes one wonder, is this simply aesthetically pleasing, or an objectification of women, and what does this say about society?  way as to be unrecognizable at first sight. This realization, and closer inspection of poses and composition, lead to interesting and frequently conflicting assessments of the subject and what it conveys. While fashion and period piece inspiration tend to give a vaguely objectifying quality to the depiction of women in Roy's pictures, the photographer's gender and inclusion as main subject tend to offset this quality by adding a touch of irony and self-reflexiveness. As such, the feeling I get is that of a re-appropriation of aesthetic codes deemed potentially offensive because of the female objectification they imply into a positive self-affirming artistic statement. It is utterly possible this says as much about myself as it says about Roy - her photography seems deliberately open to interpretation.

"Poppies 1" by Kourtney RoyWhile the eye is immediately drawn to the careful composition and beautiful colours, the mind is boggled by the scene. What happened here?

In a way, it seems that Roy's stance could be considered a post-feminist one. By becoming the "objectificator" - of herself to boot - she makes the compositions more acceptable. She seems to say "It's ok when freely done by willing and conscious participants" - a notion that could be linked to sex-positive feminism. But despite whoever stands behind the camera, the viewer is reminded of the fine line between innocent play and aesthetic construction on one hand, and degrading objectification on the other. This constant interplay, added to the frequently undecipherable attitude she has on her pictures - mixing boredom, sadness, mischief and many more - means the viewer is perpetually creating his own understanding of what is going on in the picture. As such, these are pictures one is compelled to come back to, to try and understand the mystery underlying the vignette.

From Kourtney Roy's "The Autoportraits' seriesWho is the woman you have seen in all these pictures? Finally, Roy's metamorphoses from picture to picture are a classic case of clever questioning of identity and appearance, where one wonders who is actually in front of the camera (and in her case, also behind it), and which permanence, if any, can be perceived through the numerous changes. What defines identity, and which relationship, if any, is there between identity and appearance? Roy's work is constantly generating such questions.

Roy thus composes pictures with intriguing subjects of which more can always be learned by further observation, forcing us as viewers to assess our beliefs and understanding of the vignettes she creates, and reveals herself in her preoccupation and as permanence through the change of characters she assumes. Once again, it is a powerful interplay between what is revealed of the subject, the viewer and the photographer that leads to great photography. Because if much is mysterious about Roy's pictures, one thing is clear as day: her work is always astounding.