Zeus Disguised, House of the Stags, Herculaneum, 2023 (detail)
Karen Knorr
Photography exploring cultural heritage and its ideological underpinnings, from the palaces and temples of India and Japan to the frescoed houses of Pompeii.
Selected works
Karen Knorr goes where cultures have put their pride on the walls: the palaces and temples of India and Japan, the frescoed houses and villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum. She photographs these rooms as they are, and asks what they were built to say, and to whom. Then she brings in the animals. Each is photographed separately and placed in the picture with care, a swan in a frescoed bedroom, a leopard before a mosaic, until an old myth or fable is playing out again, in the present tense, in a room where it was never meant to happen. Knorr calls herself a storyteller. The camera is how she retells the stories a heritage likes to tell about itself, and finds the ones it has left untold.
On view at PAN Amsterdam 2026, stand 85, 31 Oct – 8 Nov 2026
On view
Zeus Disguised, House of the Stags, Herculaneum, 2023
On view
Bacchus in Attendance, House of Neptune and Amphitrite, Herculaneum, 2024
On view
Ixion’s Punishment, House of the Vettii, Pompeii, 2024
On view
Rivals, House of the Vettii, Pompeii, 2026
Pan’s Apparition, Gymnasium of the Iuvenes, Pompeii, 2024
Apollo’s Messenger, Villa Oplontis, Torre Annunziata, 2025
© Karen Knorr. Courtesy of the artist and Crossover Gallery
As a storyteller using photography striving to tell stories yet untold, I use the camera as a tool to reinvent and reconsider myth and fable for contemporary times.
Karen Knorr
Biography
Karen Knorr (USA/UK) was born in Germany and grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1960s. She is Emerita Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey, UK. Her studio is based in London. She is on the steering committee of Fast Forward: Women in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts.
Karen Knorr’s photography explores cultural heritage and its ideological underpinnings. Questions concerning post-colonialism and its relationship to aesthetics have permeated her photographic work since the 1980s. Her acclaimed work India Song researched the stories and myths of India, photographing animals and placing them in temples and palaces across heritage sites in India. Karen Knorr won the V International Photography Pilar Citoler Prize in 2010. She has been nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2011 and 2012 and the Prix Pictet in 2012 and 2018. Her work is included in collections worldwide, including SFMOMA (San Francisco), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Museum of Art and Photography (Bangalore), Tate (London) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris).
In Scavi (2023 – ongoing) Knorr turns to the frescoed houses and villas of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata, restaging the myths of Greek and Roman antiquity by inserting animals into the excavated rooms.
Selected exhibitions
- 2026 — Karen Knorr Inhabits the Castle, Château d’Azay-le-Rideau, France
- 2025 — Fables and Other Stories, Centre d’art contemporain de la Matmut, Saint-Pierre-de-Varengeville
- 2025 — U.S. Route 1 (After Berenice Abbott), with Anna Fox, Rencontres d’Arles
- 2024–25 — The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, London (group)
- 2014–15 — BP Spotlight: Gentlemen and Belgravia, Tate Britain, London
Selected collections
Tate, London · Centre Pompidou, Paris · San Francisco Museum of Modern Art · Museum of Fine Arts, Houston · National Gallery of Art, Washington DC · Victoria & Albert Museum, London · Moderna Museet, Stockholm · Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore
Publications
- Connoisseurs & Academies, Kehrer, 2024
- Country Life, Stanley/Barker, 2024
- Gentlemen, Stanley/Barker, 2016
- India Song, Skira, 2014
Selected texts and interviews
- Interview by Rosa Maria Falvo, 2014
- Interview by Niccolò Fano, Fotografia, 2014
- Interview by Nirati Agrawal, Marwar, Mumbai, 2012
- Interview by Ana Bergueta, PhotoEspaña, 2008
- Natural Histories: Karen Knorr in Conversation with Rebecca Comay, in Genii Loci, Black Dog Publishing, 2002
- Museum and Medium: The Time of Karen Knorr’s Imagery, David Campany
- The Photographic Practice of Karen Knorr, Kathy Kubicki
- The Thirsty Pigeon / Fables, Lucy Soutter
- Challenging the Order of Things, Sabina Gill
- The Grapes Are Sour Anyway!, Daniel Campbell Blight
- The Virtues and the Delights: Reinventing History, Karen Knorr, Portfolio no. 19, 1994