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Kourtney Roy, photographer: "I wanted a composite image of a complex but extraordinary place"

2022-12-16T10:54:17.887Z


On the occasion of an exhibition at the Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris and a book The Other End of the Rainbow, the Canadian photographer relates an image taken from her series on the infamous Highway 16, nicknamed “Route des Tears".


“Highway 16 is a 720 kilometer long route through northern British Columbia, between isolated industrial sites and the former fur trading posts of Prince George and Prince Rupert.

For more than fifty years, women and young girls have disappeared along this solitary and contrasting road as well as at the intersections with other roads, giving it the nickname “road of tears”.

Most of the victims are from First Nations.

Even today, this systemic violence is met with indifference, flippancy or open racism by the public, the media and the police.

The disappearance and murder of white women and girls usually attract more attention than the plight of indigenous women.

The "genius of the place"

I wanted for this project to propose a composite image of a complex but extraordinary place.

The genius loci, or “genius of place”, to put it simply, is that quality or “spirit” that gives meaning to a particular place – a city, a clearing, a region or a road.

In this sense, Highway 16 does not simply drive to a destination;

it is a destination, imbued with a singular sense of history and a presence through the repeated atrocities committed along its length.

I was intrigued by how the vernacular and social architecture of this road has been influenced by its dramatic history and consistently unexplained violence.

My perception of the indifferent landscape slowly transformed.

Have the endless forests along the road witnessed these unspeakable acts?

Were all those anonymous, prosaic hotels, gas stations, rest stops now polluted with something eminently sinister?

»

In video, Les Rencontres d'Arles: a look back at the Women in Motion prize for photography

“The Other End of the Rainbow”

exhibition

, from January 7 to February 24, at the Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, 17, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, 75003 Paris.

And the book

The Other End of the Rainbow

, André Frère Éditions.

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2022-12-16

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