Karen Knorr

Interesting exhibition at Tate Britain of two sequences of photographs by Karen Knorr.

Knorr was born in Puerto Rico and came to the UK in the late 70s so she takes a slightly quirky outsider’s look at very British subjects. The first set “Gentlemen 1981-1983” showed London gentlemen’s clubs. Each picture had a quote from a speech in Parliament at the time or a news item. The effect was to slow you down as you read the quotes and make you look properly at the pictures. The quotes gave some of the photographs an ironic twist. You couldn’t help but also notice that there were a good record of the art works held by clubs.

I loved the picture which used contemporary club members to recreate almost exactly a picture which hung behind them over the mantelpiece of a previous set of members.

The second set “Belgravia 1979-1981” took a similar approach using pictures of a privileged minority living in that area of London at the time and quotes from them. I  found myself agreeing with the quote “You won’t get me to eat lentils even if you paid me £1 a lentil.” 

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