Franco-Haitian photographer Henry Roy brings Impossible Island exhibition to AGWA

Legendary Franco-Haitian photographer Henry Roy is set to unveil his first survey at The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) this month.

Henry Roy – Impossible Island draws on 40 years of recollections and observations as it brings together 113 photos taken from 1983 to 2023. The images were shot in places such as his native Haiti, Ibiza, Paris, Dakar, Cameroon, Normandy, Marrakesh, Thailand, and the Ivory Coast.

The exhibition channels the many influences that have shaped Roy’s artistic journey, including his exile from his homeland of Haiti to his love of literature and passion for New Wave French cinema.

Henry Roy – Impossible Island opens at AGWA on Saturday, November 30 with an artist talk and book signing from 5.30pm where Henry Roy will discuss his artistic practice with managing curator Robert Cook. Following the artist talk, Henry Roy will be signing his new AGWA photo book at the event.

“Impossible Island evokes my exile from Haiti, and the quest for a metaphorical island, an imaginary refuge where one can escape the brutality of the world,” Henry Roy said. “It presents a bittersweet universe where water and sunlight dominate, symbols of both life and death.”

“Here, one confronts a world marked by tension, a wavering between dream and reality, tragedy and sweetness, melancholy and voluptuousness. It reveals the unconscious of a Franco-Haitian artist who does not deny any aspect of his being. It is, above all, visual poetry, a work that appears simple and natural but is not bound by conventional codes. It comprises free, untamed images and texts, animistic prayers.”

Henry Roy’s work has been of international interest since the 1990s as a sought-after photographer in magazine editorial and exhibition contexts.

His photographic vision was a key component of the new publishing trends in the late 1990s, specifically as a contributor to Purple and later in the 2000s Hobo magazine.

“These were less commercially oriented fashion and lifestyle magazines that had a new thoughtfully philosophical bent to them,” AGWA curator Robert Cook explained. “Shoots of clothing, for instance, were artfully embedded in everyday contexts and less sleekly theatrical than their predecessors.”

“These magazines often felt like open questions about the status of clothing, people, creativity and the like. This ran alongside the rise of fashion designers like Martin Margiela, among others, that had a deconstructive air to them,” he said.

Roy was born into the unstable political situation of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. While still a young child, he and his family were forced to leave as political refugees, and they resettled in the south of France. He studied photography in Paris, and then worked as photojournalist and for advertising. In 1998, his work was discovered by Elein Fleiss, one of the editors of the French-based Purple magazine, and he published with them for ten years. In 1996, he published Regards Noirs, a book of portraits—inspired by photographers like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn—dedicated to leading black French figures.

Henry Roy – Impossible Island is showing at The Art Gallery of Western Australia from Saturday, November 30 and running until May 2025. For more info and to buy tickets, head to artgallery.wa.gov.au