“By replacing direct evidence with absence, Kourtney Roy highlights the impossibility of any obvious way of speaking about these “small lives” that never attract any attention. British Columbia, Canada, has experienced a wave of murders spread over fifty years. Since 1969, dozens of women and girls have gone missing; some were found dead, scattered along what is now called the “Highway of Tears.”

“Surprisingly simple in its premise, free of lyricism yet never flat, Roy’s series depicts places that seamlessly follow one another. There is an accumulation of fragments, wherein detail goes hand-in-hand with an absence of visceral scenes.

The image narrative articulates the impossibility of conveying the world’s disorder directly. This disorder is essentially nocturnal, blurred by fog or forest fires; in other words, it escapes the gaze, remaining forever refractory to photography. We will have to make do! Thus, in what cannot be expressed, the medium rediscovers its primary quality, the silence that accompanies violence”.
François Cheval, extracts.