Kourtney Roy’s ‘The Tourist’ at Les Rencontres d’Arles (2025) 

This summer, Kourtney Roy’s series, ‘The Tourist’ (2019–2020), has been exhibiting at Les Rencontres d’Arles (2025). Roy’s visually arresting project fuses flamboyant technicolour with cinematic flair and sharp self-awareness. Through a tableaux of staged holiday scenes—poolside glamour, faux-animal prints, and meticulously coordinated outfits—Roy probes at the performative rituals of tourism. Her images oscillate between allure and artifice, revealing how leisure is often more a carefully constructed spectacle than an authentic experience.

Del Barrett, Founder of Hundred Heroines, writes, “Roy hits the holiday nail bang on the head. Research shows most people enjoy the anticipation and recollection of a holiday more than the actual experience, which is why the holiday snapshot is so important. It removes the disappointments and creates a rose-tinted memory of pleasures we didn’t have. Roy inverts the ritual by taking us into a setting of apparent glamour, which, in reality, is much closer to our own experience.”

Alongside the exhibition, Roy spoke (in French) on the panel of two conferences at the festival, the first titled ‘Staging and Photography’, and the second, ‘Gaze Talk: Body and Photography’. 

Kourtney Roy: The Tourist
Ancien Collège Mistral, Arles (site 18)
2 Rue Condorcet, 13200, Arles
09.30 AM – 07.00 PM until 5 October 2025