Karen Knorr

Karen Knorr HonFRPS is a German-born American photographer who lives in London.[1] In 2018 she received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.

This article is about the photographer. For the sociologist, see Karin Knorr Cetina.

Life and work

Knorr was born in Frankfurt and raised in the 1960s in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the 1970s, she moved to Great Britain where she has lived ever since.[2] Knorr is a graduate of the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster), and has an MA from the University of Derby. She is Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts.[3]

Knorr's work explores Western cultural traditions, mainly British society, with widely ranging topics, from lifestyle to animals. She is interested in conceptual art, visual culture, feminism, and animal studies, and her art maintains connections with these topics.[4]

Between 1979 and 1981 Knorr produced Belgravia, a series of black and white photographs each accompanied by a short text, typically critical to the British class system of the time. Subsequently, she produced Gentlemen (1981-1983), a series consisting of photographs of gentlemen's members clubs and texts taken from parliamentary speeches and news reports. In these series, Knorr investigated values of the English upper middle classes, comparing them with aristocratic values. In 1986, the series Connoisseurs was made in color. The series incorporates staged events into English architectural interiors. Between 1994 and 2004, Knorr photographed fine art academies throughout Europe, which resulted in the series Academies.[4]

In 2008, she traveled to Rajasthan and took a large series of photographs, predominantly showing Indian interiors, often with animals from Indian folklore inside.[1] She subsequently became a frequent traveller to India, visiting the country 15 times between 2008 and 2014. She mentioned that most of the buildings in India were never photographed, and they are not less interesting than common tourist attractions.[5]

From 2014 to 2015, one room of Tate Britain hosted an exhibition of her photographs of "posh west Londoners in domestic settings and portraits of members at a gentlemen's club" (Belgravia series).[6]

Publications

Publications by Knorr
  • Karen Knorr. 2001. By Antonio Guzman.
  • Marks of Distinction. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. ISBN 978-0500541654. With an introduction by Patrick Mauries, "The Outsider"; and an interview by Antonio Guzman with Knorr.
  • Genii Loci: the Photographic Work of Karen Knorr. London: Black Dog, 2002. ISBN 978-1901033380. Photographs, and texts by Antonio Guzman, "Rewind and fast-forward: photography, allegory and palimpsest"; Rebecca Comay and Knorr, "Natural histories"; and David Campany, "Museum and medium: the time of Karen Knorr's imagery". An overview of Knorr's work from the 1990s to 2002.
  • Fables. Trézélan: Filigranes, 2008. ISBN 978-2-35046-135-9. With texts by Lucy Soutter and Nathalie Leleu. Text in French and English.
  • Karen Knorr. Madrid: La Fábrica; Córdoba, Spain: University of Córdoba, 2011. ISBN 978-84-9927-105-7. Text in Spanish, English and French.
  • India Song. Skira, 2014. ISBN 978-8857222356. Edited by Falvo Rosa Maria. With a preface by William Dalrymple, an essay by Christopher Pinney, and an interview by Rosa Maria Falvo.
  • Belgravia. London: Stanley Barker, 2015. ISBN 978-0956992246. Edition of 1000 copies.
  • Gentlemen. London: Stanley Barker, 2016. ISBN 978-0956992291.
  • Questions (After Brecht). London: Gost, 2020. ISBN 978-1-910401-48-4. With an interview by Campany.

Publications paired with others
  • Punks. With Olivier Richon. London: Gost, 2013. With an essay by Knorr and Richon. ISBN 978-0-9574272-6-6. Edition of 1000 copies.

Publications with contributions by Knorr

Exhibitions
  • Belgravia 1979–81 and Gentlemen 1981–83, Tate Britain, London, 2014/2015.[9]
  • Karen Knorr, India Song, Slowtrack Society, Madrid, Spain, 2015.
  • Karen Knorr, Monogatari, Filles du Calvaire, Paris, 2015.

Awards

References
  1. Green, Penelope (2 November 2011). "In Karen Knorr's Photography, an Ironic Sense of Place". New York Times. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
  2. "Karen Knorr Biography". Danziger Gallery. Retrieved 19 August 2015.
  3. "Professor Karen Knorr". University for the Creative Arts. Archived from the original on January 19, 2015. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  4. "Monogatari". Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  5. Orr, Gillian (3 May 2015). "Photographer Karen Knorr's India Song features animals from Indian folklore in exotic settings". The Independent. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  6. Pellerin, Ananda (25 November 2014). "Karen Knorr: BP Spotlight". Time Out London. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
  7. "From Talbot to Fox. 150 Years of British Social Photography". James Hyman. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
  8. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe; Roegiers, Patrick; Meatyard, Christopher (1986). Theatre des Realites. Paris: Metz Pour la Photographie. pp. 28–31, 108–109. ISBN 2859490647.
  9. "BP Spotlight: Karen Knorr". Tate. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  10. "The Royal Photographic Society Awards 2018". www.rps.org. Archived from the original on 2018-12-04. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
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