Karen Knorr, an American was born in Frankfurt am Main , Germany and was raised in San Juan Puerto Rico in the 1960s. She finished her education in Paris , Switzerland and London . Karen has taught, and lectured internationally including The University of Westminster, Goldsmiths College, Harvard and The Art Institute of Chicago. Karen Knorr studied at the Umiversity of Westminster, a contemporary of Olivier Richon , Mitra Tabrizian, and Mark Lewis whose photography addressed the critical debates concerning the "politics of representation" practices which emerged during the late 1970's and early 1980's.
Karen Knorr produced Belgravia (1979- 1981) ground breaking series of black and white photographs with ironic and humorous texts that highlighted aspirations, lifestyle and the British class system under the neo liberalist Thatcher era in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Her most well known work called Gentlemen (1981-1983) was photographed in Saint James’s clubs in London and investigated contemporary conservative values. In 1986 her work Connoisseurs used colour to explore connoisseurship regarding heritage and art in England in the 1980’s. Here she introduced elements and staged events in the architectural interiors of Chiswick House, Osterley Park House, the Dulwich Picture Gallery. This is a strategy that still appears in her photography today. The use of text and captioning appeared as device to slow down consumption of the image and to comment on the received ideas of fine art in museum culture.
Karen Knorr’s work has developed a critical and playful dialogue with photography using different visual and textual strategies to explore her chosen subject matter that ranges from the family and lifestyle to the animal and its representation in the museum context. Karen Knorr uses photography to explore western cultural traditions from gentlemen’s clubs to elegant Palladian country houses; that present and comment on British society. Karen has been photographing fine art academies throughout Europe since 1994. Academies reflects on the relationship beween the production of art , its transmission and consumption. Her work continues a critical dialogue with conceptual art , visual culture , feminism and animal studies.
In her recent series Fables (2004- 2008)photographs mix analogue and digital photography playfully reconfiguring tales (Ovid, Aesop La Fontaine) with popular culture (Disney and Attenborough) in museums and heritage sites which include Carnavalet Museum, the Museum of Hunt and Nature in Paris, Chambord Castle and the Conde Museum in Chantilly Castle. The visuality of these photographs is rich with reference to the baroque. More recently Knorr has been exploring modernism using Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in Poissy reintroducing life into the modernist aesthetic of a building which has become a shrine to high modernism..
Karen Knorr is currently developing a new project in India considering the cultural heritage and animal world focusing on Mughal architecture and women’s quarters : “zenanas”. Karen Knorrr exhibits her work internationally and her work is in many public and private collections worldwide. Her retrospective exhibition Fables was recently shown in Brussels is currently traveling across France. Karen Knorr will be showing Gentlemen in Elles @centrepompidou , George Pompidou Museum in May 2009 .