Karen Knorr

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Karen Knorr (born January 5, 1954 in Frankfurt am Main ) is an American photographer and artist of German origin who lives and works in London. Her photo series in black and white and color set ironic and critical accents of a visual and textual nature in recordings that only appear documentary at first glance. The topics range from family and lifestyle to animals and their representation in a museum context.

Photography from the Gentlemen series
Karen Knorr , 1981-1983
Gelatin-silver print
50.8 x 40.6 cm
Jean-Claude Planchet - Center Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Dist. RMN-GP, © Karen Knorr, Paris

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Conqueror of the World, Podar Haveli, Nawalgarh
Karen Knorr , 2008–2012
Color photography
127 × 152.4 cm
Danziger Gallery, New York

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Life

Karen Knorr grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1960s. She later attended schools in Paris and London , where she studied at the University of Westminster from 1977 to 1980 and at the University of Derby (Derbyshire) from 1988 to 1990 . Since 1980 the artist has given lectures and lectures around the world, from 1996 to 2002 at Goldsmiths College for Fine Arts at the University of London . Since 2010 she has held a chair in photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham (Surrey) .

Topics in the factory

Karen Knorr exhibited photographs as early as the 1970s. Early work included Belgravia (1979–1981), black and white socially critical images with ironic texts depicting the lifestyle of Thatcher-era British class society of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The recordings of her best-known series, Gentlemen (1981–1983), were taken at Saint James's Club in London and ironize the conservative patriarchal values ​​of Great Britain at the time of the Falklands War . From the Connoisseurs (1986–1990) color series onwards , cultural heritage became an important theme, initially with reference to Great Britain and in Academies (1994–2001) to the European mainland. Since a study trip to Rajasthan in 2008, she has been photographing the relationship between the cultural heritage in the Far East , the present and female subjectivity, as shown in the volume India Song (2015).

Working method and style

With the large format camera, Knorr creates photo series in black and white and color , which are supposed to tell stories in the sense of narrative photography , which is made possible by carefully arranging the motifs. On the one hand, Knorr combines analog and digital technology on the technical level : negatives are scanned in and later digitally processed. Also installations ( When will we ever learn? 2,007) and video equipment ( Being for Another , 1995) part are her work.

Since the Fables series (2004–2008), Knorr has also composed on the motif level: in India Song (since 2008), for example, she has mounted individual animals such as lions or peacocks, which she photographed in zoos or when they were stuffed , into magnificent Indian palace buildings . In this way, it can enable an unfamiliar view of the apparently familiar and question clichés , creating an impression of the surreal . Knorr's work can be classified in the broadest sense in the postmodern era, but also shows photo-realistic elements and is unmistakable in its very special combination. She has often formulated subtitles or ironic comments on her pictures , thus interlacing picture and language.

publication

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Awards (selection)

Research literature

  • Bertrand Tillier: Karen Knorr, Karen Knorr, le faux et les variations d'une fabuliste. In: Sociétés & Représentations. 33, 1, 2012, pp. 119-127.
  • Roger Hargreaves : Karen Knorr. Myths and fables. In: Source. Summer (67), 2011, ISSN  1369-2224 , pp. 13-23. (Interview with Karen Knorr)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Penelope Green: In Karen Knorr's Photography, an Ironic Sense of Place. In: The New York Times . November 2, 2011, accessed March 24, 2015.
  2. ^ Contemporary Art Society: Karen Knorr. , accessed March 24, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b c Andreas Beyer, Bénédicte Savoy, Wolf Tegethoff (ed.): De Gruyter General Artist Lexicon. The visual artists of all times and peoples. Volume 81: Knecht-Kretzner. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-023186-1 , p. 443.
  4. ^ University of the Creative Arts, Farnham (Surrey): Professor Karen Knorr. , accessed March 24, 2015.
  5. ^ Fritz Emslander: Participating observers. Online document: www01.zkm.de/kbb/downloads/texte/tiefen-t-dl/Essay_Emslander.doc, accessed on March 24, 2015.
  6. ^ Announcement on the exhibition , accessed on March 15, 2015.
  7. ↑ Announcement on the exhibition´ ( Memento of the original from April 9th, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 14, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.danzigergallery.com
  8. ↑ Verena Stehle: When the animals left the forest. There was a time when naturalists decorated their study with stuffed mammals - today urban hipsters do the same. About the renaissance of a whimsical living trend called “taxidermy”. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 19, 2010.
  9. ↑ Message from the museum about the exhibition ( Memento des original from July 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 14, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kunsthalle-baden-baden.de
  10. ^ Announcement on the award of the prize , Spanish, accessed on March 15, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Knorr, Karen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer and artist
DATE OF BIRTH 5th January 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main