American photographer Karen Knorr’s last series if composed of constructed animal scenarios taken in both Europe and India. Shot between 2003 and 2016 in various European museums and stately homes and in Indian palaces and temples, these images explores the disjunction between nature and culture, bringing the historical tradition of picturing animals squarely into the 21st century.
In both series Knorr playfully combines technologies and genres, mixing digital and analogue, architectural and nature photography. Working in a predominantly digital format, images of interiors are combined with animal figures photographed separately and then inserted into the environment of the artist’s choice. The boundaries of the real are thus challenged both by this hybrid process and also by the incongruity of the scenes. This ambiguity goes to the heart of Knorr’s work and gives her images their force.
As the photographer points out, the usual aim of fables is to teach a lesson by drawing attention to animal behavior and its relationship to human actions and shortcomings. Animals in fables speak metaphorically of human folly, criticizing human nature. Yet in Knorr’s universe, the animals are neither dressed up to resemble humans nor do they illustrate any explicit moral. Liberated from narrative constraints, they roam freely in human territory, drawing attention to the unbridged gap between nature and culture. They encroach into the domain of museums and palaces, showing us the incommensurable distance between two worlds: raw nature on the one hand and on the other the cultural site which allows nature entry only in the form of a representation.
Karen Knorr, Europe and India
April 13 – May 25
Danziger Gallery
95 Rivington St
New York, NY 10002
USA
