A favourite of Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, Henry Roy’s new photo book captures 40 years of travel across Ibiza, Thailand, Dakar, Haiti and more
Condensing four decades of work into a book of just 113 pages is a near-impossible task, but Henry Roy has managed to do just that with the guidance of Marseille-based publisher Loose Joints. A poetically jumbled sequence of sunsets, sleeping strangers, bodies of water and moments of everyday splendour form Impossible Island, an evocative reflection upon Roy’s career. “This work is about exile,” the Franco-Haitian photographer tells AnOther of his book, launched alongside a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. “It explores the connection between our origins and the experience of the wider world, all perceived as a dream.”
Roy and his family fled Haiti in the mid-1960s for political reasons when the photographer was just three years old, settling in Paris, where he remains today. “Impossible Island refers to the French expression la possibilité d’une île, which suggests the hope of finding a refuge in contemporary reality,” the photographer explains. “My title, which contradicts this expression, does not, however, reflect despair. I was born on an impossible island, Haiti, which I had to leave at a very young age. My work describes the imagination of someone uprooted, searching for a lost island.”
Roy decided to become a photographer when he was 18 after helping a friend develop images in the darkroom, stating that “something powerful happened within” when he saw the first photograph emerge from the bathtub. This led to his travels around the world as a photojournalist in the 80s and 90s, taking him to places like Ibiza, Paris, Dakar, Cameroon, Normandy, Marrakesh, Thailand, the Ivory Coast and back to his native Haiti. Marked by a melancholic beauty informed by his love of French New Wave cinema, these rich images have been published in fashion publications such as Vogue and Purple and influenced filmmakers like Barry Jenkins, who cited Roy as a key reference for his gorgeously rendered 2016 film Moonlight.

Of all the places that Roy has been, a couple of trips stand out as particularly pivotal, especially his first visit to the tiny Balearic island Es Vedrà, situated off Ibiza, in the early 80s. “After discovering the photo darkroom, it became my second transformative revelation,” he says. “As an exile, I made Es Vedrà a metaphor for my lost paradise and have continued to photograph it over the decades that followed.” While Ibiza was an emotional homecoming, a trip to Congo for a commercial job in 2002 marked a turning point in Roy’s practice when political tensions in the region meant French foreigners were confined to an outdated four-star hotel. The photographer shot people in moments of reflection, rest and thought, creating a series of photographs that he states have “greatly contributed to defining the uniqueness of my style”.
Looking back at his life’s work for this project, Roy observes a few recurring themes, all of which seem to seek little moments of magic or transcendence in the everyday. “Water is a recurring element in my work,” he says. “I am irresistibly drawn to rivers, the sea, and even certain swimming pools. In the magical-symbolic tradition of Haitian Vodou, water is a channel through which the souls of the deceased travel. The female body is also prominently featured. In my photographs, it exudes a particular sensuality, often linked to motherhood. There are also many images of people asleep – men, women, and children immersed in their dreams.”

Forming a poignant 40-year journey across the world, the images in Impossible Island capture a career spent exploring not only what it means to be displaced, but how the places we call home can shape who we become. “My practice has followed the twists and turns of my life,” Roy says. “My work is imbued with my encounters, experiences, loves, rebellions, questions, observations, fantasies, and discoveries. The content has evolved significantly and technically I’ve gone through various phases, but the essence of my style has changed little since the beginning. The same feeling, the same vibration, runs through all my images.”
Impossible Island by Henry Roy is published by Loose Joints, and is out now.