Sundaram Tagore Gallery is pleased to present a wide-ranging exhibition of photographs by Karen Knorr, the British-American artist known for her visually rich, conceptually driven images that explore wealth, power and the aesthetics of beauty.

On view for the first time in New York are select works from Knorr’s brand-new series Scavi, set amid the stunning architectural heritage sites of southern Italy. The exhibition also features recent additions to India Song and fables alongside historical analog photographs from Knorr’s groundbreaking work from the 1980s and nineties.

Throughout her nearly fifty-year career, Knorr has used photography as a method of critical inquiry employing the opulent palaces of India, monuments of Western Europe and the great houses of Britain to frame issues of power rooted in cultural heritage. Rendered in brilliant color and sumptuous detail, Knorr’s images provoke pointed questions about class, gender, colonialism, exoticism and representation in art and history.

“For this exhibition, I chose to focus on these series in particular because they all have connections and intersections,” Knorr says. “The work examines systems of power that create inequalities and the ways in which the ‘other’ — animals, women, people of color — disrupt those power structures”.

Scavi (2023 – 2024)

Knorr’s newest series, named after the Italian word for excavation, was inspired by a 2023 visit to several World Heritage sites surrounding Naples, including Herculaneum, Oplontis and Pompeii. Buried under ash and volcanic debris for centuries after the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the unearthed sites offer a fascinating glimpse into the everyday lives of enslaved people and citizens. They also reveal the bond between humans and animals, both the domesticated pets and wild creatures that were kept, including monkeys, parrots, leopards and lions, which were considered status symbols by the elite.

Animals are front and center in Scavi, a series in which Knorr explores Greek and Roman myths, some of which are depicted in the ancient frescos. Set against exquisite, centuries-old murals, Knorr’s superimposed animals serve as contemporary proxies for ancient myths, inviting viewers to reflect on the interplay between history and modernity, myth and reality.

India song (2008–2023)

Knorr’s most widely recognized series, India Song, began with a 2,000-mile trek across Rajasthan in 2008. The life-changing experience altered the focus of her practice, shifting her gaze to the upper-caste culture of the Rajput in India and its relationship to the “other”.

In these skillfully crafted images, Knorr focuses on the interiors of sacred and secular spaces of Rajasthan. Photographed with a large-format Sinar P3 analogue camera and scanned to very high resolution, the images celebrate the vibrant visual culture of northern India and the layered, syncretic nature of the architecture, where motifs from Hindu and Islamic culture merge and migrate from room to room. Inspired by the Indian tradition of personifying animals in literature and art, Knorr digitally imposes images of tigers, elephants, peacocks and monkeys within these lavish spaces, which she photographs in reserves and zoos.

The settings are symbolic of wealth and social hierarchies and the animals who wander through them upend the power dynamics. The conflict between culture and nature, the fragility of the buildings damaged by earthquakes and mass tourism and the animals themselves, threatened by climate change and extinction, add a melancholic air. “I see these photographs as real documents of architectural heritage and wildlife that may disappear and are equally threatened”, says Knorr.

Fables (2002– 2022)

Unlike traditional parables, where animals often embody or allude to human foibles, the animals that inhabit Fables are not anthropomorphized to symbolically represent a moral narrative. As interlopers wandering freely throughout the distinctly human domains, they draw attention to the unbridged gap between nature and the museums and other cultural sanctuaries that resolutely forbid their entry, except in the form of representation. Their intrusion disturbs the site, piercing the sober atmosphere with their lively presence and by extension, upending the viewer’s expectations as well.

New additions to the series feature The Getty Villa in the exclusive Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, the extravagant re-creation of a Roman villa built to house the Getty Museum’s vast collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities.

In The unbearable lightness of being, Getty Villa, 2022, a flamingo, vivid pink with black-tipped wings, stands poised among the outer peristyle garden. The title of the image, inspired by Milan Kundera’s iconic book, refers to lightness as a form of freedom but also love and sex. Perhaps the flamingo is an incarnation of the famed oil tycoon who established the museum, now wandering its lush gardens and colonnades in eternal leisure.

Connoisseurs (1986-1990) and academies (1994–2005)

Photographed with an analog camera between 1986 and 2005, these two series examine connoisseurship, authenticity and the foundation myths of European fine-art culture. Knorr uses the architectural splendor of museums, academies and stately homes of Europe as her backdrop, incorporating objects from their collections to contextualize the Eurocentric classical aesthetic, which is still prevalent throughout Western museums and cultural institutions today.

Both series feature cleverly staged narratives set within well-appointed interiors of historic associations, such as the Repin Institute of Arts in Saint Petersburg, Musée d’Orsay in Paris and London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery. The spaces are occupied by paintings, sculptures and books—costly souvenirs collected by the privileged few who could travel for leisure in the eighteenth century. These objects were housed in private galleries or dedicated rooms in museums, subsequently elevating the status of the owners and endowing them as arbiters of beauty and taste.

Gentlemen (1981–1983) and Country life (1983–1985)

In these early black-and-white images, Knorr employs elements of satire—in both imagery and text—to explore attitudes prevalent among the English establishment in the 1980s. Select works from these iconic series are presented together in a single large-scale installation.

Gentlemen explores deep-rooted patriarchal values of the British elite. The images, shot in historic gentlemen’s clubs of St. James, a famously aristocratic neighborhood in central London, are accompanied by text culled from parliamentary speeches and news clips. These private realms, exclusive to rich and powerful men, are still centers of influence in politics and industry today.

Originally commissioned for an exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, Country Life parodies class attitudes and the established ideals of the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher. Initially, Knorr was asked to chronicle changes in British society prompted by the introduction of new technologies but chose to capture the attitudes and activities of the landed gentry instead.

The images, shot among refined interiors and manicured gardens of London, Scotland and Oxfordshire, emulate conventions of traditional still-life and landscape genres, where bucolic settings and the collected objects of the leisure class serve to commemorate family histories and reinforce impenetrable social networks based on favor, privilege and accidents of birth.

British-American artist and activist Karen Knorr (b. 1954) was born to American parents in Frankfurt, Germany, and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She studied art in Paris and London, where she eventually settled in 1976 and still lives today. Her multicultural upbringing was deeply influential, especially in the formative years of her career when she used photography to make sense of her world as a young Puerto Rican American assimilating to life in London. Her experience as an outsider is part of what sparked her enduring interest in exploring issues surrounding culture and society.

Knorr was also inspired by the artistic practices of friends and contemporaries, including photographers Bill Brandt, Bill Owens and Diane Arbus, as well as conceptual artists Michael Asher, Martha Rosler, Andrea Fraser and Hans Haacke, one of the leading proponents of institutional critique. In the 1970s, Knorr studied under noted photographer Eileen Cowin and artist Victor Burgin, who opened her eyes to new ways of critically engaging with photography and its relationship to institutions and heritage.

Karen Knorr’s work has been exhibited around the world, including at Tate Britain; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Museum of Photographic Arts, California; Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; Kyoto Modern Museum of Art, Japan; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; and the Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai. Her work is in the collections of Tate London, Victoria & Albert Museum and the United Kingdom Government Art Collection, England; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and Centre Pompidou, France; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan, among others.

Knorr was awarded the Photography Pilar Citoler Prize in 2011 and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse in 2011 and 2012. She has also received nominations for the Prix Pictet in 2012 and 2018. As an advocate for women in photography, she was made an Honorary Fellow at the Royal Photographic Society in 2018, as well as Honorary Chair of Women in Photography.

Knorr is an activist as well as an artist, advocating for transnationality, equality and diversity in the art world. She is Emeritus Professor of photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey, United Kingdom.

Knor’s most recent book releases include Connoisseurs and academies (Kehrer, 2024) and Country life (Stanley/Barker, 2024).