Karen Knorr

Master of Seduction, Amer Fort, Amer, 2017From the series ‘India Song’

Karen Knorr Biography Karen Knorr’s work traverses the charged territories of cultural heritage, postcolonialism, and ideological power — rendered through meticulous, staged tableaux that are at once sumptuous and unsettling. Her most celebrated series, India Song, saw Knorr researching the myths and sacred stories of the subcontinent, photographing animals inhabiting temples and palaces across India’s heritage sites. Earlier landmark series — Belgravia (1979–1981), Gentlemen (1981–1983), and Connoisseurs (1986) — established Knorr’s reputation for sharp, playful critiques of class, patriarchy, and connoisseurship in British cultural life. More recently, Knorr has extended to Japan with the Monogatari series and to Italy with Scavi, revisiting classical myths from Ovid and Homer as they appear in the frescoes of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Karen Knorr was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1954 and grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1960s. She completed her education in Paris before settling in London, where she has lived and worked since 1976. Knorr studied photography at the University of Westminster in the mid-1970s and has served as Emerita Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts. She is also a co-founder, alongside Anna Fox, of Fast Forward: Women in Photography, an initiative supporting conferences and workshops for women photographers worldwide. Karen Knorr's publishing record reflects the scope of her practice across nearly five decades. A major monograph published by Kehrer Verlag surveys her work from 1986–2005, focusing on the Connoisseurs and Academies series. Fables and Other Stories, a book accompanying her 2025 survey exhibition, brings together the series Fables, The Lanesborough, Monogatari, and Scavi. In 2025, Knorr co-authored a collaborative book with photographer Anna Fox — US Route 1: After Berenice Abbott, published by Trolley Books — documenting a road trip retracing Berenice Abbott's iconic American journey, exhibited at Rencontres d'Arles, France. Knorr won the V International Photography Pilar Citoler Prize in 2010 and has received nominations for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2011, 2012, and 2025, and for the Prix Pictet in 2012 and 2018. An upcoming retrospective of Knorr's work is currently being curated for presentation at Château d'Azay-le-Rideau and Oiron, with a press opening scheduled for July 2026. Karen Knorr’s work is held in major collections worldwide, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Tate, Centre Pompidou, the Museum of London, Folkwang Museum Essen, and the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art. Notable recent exhibitions include Photographing 80s Britain: A Critical Decade at Tate Britain (November 2024–May 2025) and Fables and Other Stories at Matmut Centre d’Art Contemporain (February–June 2025). Jackson Fine Art has presented Karen Knorr’s work in a solo exhibition India Song & Metamorphoses (2017) and the group exhibition 30 Years of Women: Curated by Jane Jackson and Anna Walker Skillman (2020).