In French, there’s the expression ‘la possibilité d’une île,’ which suggests the hope of finding a refuge in contemporary reality. Franco-Haitian photographer Henry Roy has used that as inspiration for his latest photo book, titled Impossible Island, published by Loose Joints and The Art Gallery of Western Australia.
But as he told AnOther Mag recently, “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.” That quest brought Henry to travel to many places in the world — Cameroon, Ibiza, Thailand, Marrakech, Dakar, Ivory Coast, or his native Haiti, among others. For four decades, he’s captured the people, the essence, and the soul of such diverse places, be it through portraits or landscape photography.
On view until May 18 at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, the exhibition Impossible Island traces the incredible work of Henry over the years, delving into his obsessions: bodies of water, transcendent moments, or sun-kissed paradises. But there’s a thread pulling all his work together: a passion to understand identity and a sense of belonging — his own especially, but also that of others. His family had to flee Haiti for political reasons when Henry was still a child, but that event influenced his oeuvre forever.
To complement the exhibition, Loose Joints teams up with the Australian institution to publish Impossible Island, a beautiful addition to the impressive collection of photo books already published by Roy — his first volume, published in 1996, being a book of black-and-white studio portraits of Black personalities from different backgrounds, titled Regards Noirs. Throughout his career, the artist has also published stories in prestigious magazines like Purple, Vogue Paris, M Le Monde, Artreview or L’Officiel, among others.
© Henry Roy 2025 courtesy Loose Joints / AGWA