V O G U E | Diaspora: Architecture

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Karen Knorr: "India Song", the Panchatantra of the 21st century

Like the pioneering early photographers who found in India a wealth of exotic subject matter, Karen Knorr celebrates the visual richness found in the myths and stories of northern India using sacred and secular sited to highlight caste, femininity and its relationship with the animal world. Interiors are painstakingly photographed, live animals are inserted into the architectural sites, fusing high resolution digital with analogue photography. In India Song, Knorr's most recent work, each finished photograph is both a mystery and a fable - referencing the vast tradition of picturing animals in art along with the western appreciation/appropriation of eastern culture and form. The results create original and stunning images that reinvent the Panchatantra (an ancient Indian collection of animal fables) for the 21st century and further blur the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Based in London, Karen Knorr was born in Frankfurt, Germany, raised in San Juan Puerto Rico, and educated in Paris and London. Widely exhibited in Europe and India, India Song is the artist's first solo show in the United States. This past October, this series was nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize - Europe's most prestigious award for a living photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the medium of photography over the past year.
India Song is currently showing at Danziger Gallery, New York.

India Song 2008-2010

Avatars of Devi, Zanana, Samode Palace
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Witness, Humayun's Tomb, New Delhi
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Queen's Room, Udaipur City Palace
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Gatekeeper, Zanana, Samode Palace
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Private Audience, AAm Khas, Junha Mahal, Dungarpur
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Courtyard Conference, Dungarpur Palace
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

Conqueror of the World, Podar Haveli, Nawalgarh
© Karen Knorr

Flight to Freedom, Durbar Hall
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Joy Of Ahimsa, Takhat Vilas, Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

The Peacemaker, Jaipur Palace
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

Flight to Freedom, Durbar Hall
© Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery NY

Courtesy Karen Knorr / Danziger Gallery, New York

India Song

November 3 - December 23, 2011
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Camille Zakharia: Coastal Promenade

Camille Zakharia uses his camera to document the journey taken since his departure from Lebanon in 1985. Born in 1962 in Tripoli, Zakharia fled his country's civil war, and spent time in the US, Turkey, Greece and Canada before moving to Bahrain in 1999. A graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax, Canada), and a Bachelor of Engineering from the American University of Beirut, Zakharia received numerous accolades for his work and exhibited in distinguished venues across North America and the Middle East. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the prestigious Jameel Prize at the Victoria & Albert Museum for Islamic art.

Coastal Promenade was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Bahrain as part of the Reclaim project, which won Bahrain the Golden Lion Award in their participation at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennal. The series looks at the present state of the archipelago's coastline, devasted over the last few years by urban change.
Adopting the classical documentary tradition, Camille Zakharia has produced an inventory of the shoreline's landscapes and architecture of lost, desolate zones devoid of animal, plant or human life. And yet these places possess a fragile everyday beauty: beneath a cloudless sky, a sprinkling of fishermen's huts stands as relics of a declining culture - an architecture without architects, as the photographer calls it, which is equally threatened by political and social change.

Coastal Promenade

@Camille Zakharia / Musee du Quai Branly, Photoquai 2011

@Camille Zakharia / Musee du Quai Branly, Photoquai 2011

Camille Zakharia " Coastal Promenade " is currently on exhibit at the Musee du Quai Branly

September 13 - November 11, 2011

Courtesy Musee du Quai Branly / Photoquai 2011
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Living and Loving Barcelona at El Palauet

Landmark Gothic buildings and world-class museums fill the historic city of Barcelona, while the whimsical creations of the Modernisme movement and cutting-edge contemporary architecture highlight the newer part of town.

The hotel El Palauet (Palauet, in the Catalan language, is a small palau or palace) is located on Barcelona's most exclusive boulevard at Passeig de Gracia, and just three blocks from Antoni Gaudi's undulating Casa Mila.
Built in 1906, this five-story palatial mansion, is an extraordinary example of Modernisme (the Catalan version of Art Nouveau). Its architect, Pere Falques, a contemporary of Gaudi, is also known for his ornate lampposts jutting from ceramic tile benches that are sidewalk landmarks at Passeig de Gracia.

A more intimate approach to hotel living, El Palauet offers six two-bedroom, two-bath apartment-style suites, extremely spacious (1,615 sf), with state-of-the-art technology throughout. Modern and contemporary pieces of furniture are present in the different rooms with works by the Eames, Starck, Van der Rohe and Jacobsen among others. Original features such as the 45 different period ceilings, doors and stained glass windows have been carefully restored and provided the frame for interiors decorated in the "Contemporary Modernista" style.

In addition, guests at El Palauet enjoy utmost privacy at the rooftop spa and landscaped terrace with a panoramic view of this Mediterranean jewel.

Courtesy Hotel El Palauet, Barcelona
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La Maison Champs-Elysees by Maison Martin Margiela

The origin of the building of 8 rue Jean Goujon is the essence of a French Maison ( traditional house). In 1864, the Duchess of Rivoli, Princess of Essling, Great Mistress of the House of Empress Eugenie purchased the land to have her house conceived by French architect Jules Pellechet. The masterpiece was completed in 1866 in the purest classical Parisian style," hausmannien." The property was later bought by the Association of the Centraliens to welcome the activities of the alumni association of the Paris Ecole Centrale.
In 1969, La Maison des Centraliens has been enlarged to become a hotel.

In 2010, La Maison Champs Elysees commissioned Maison Martin Margiela to redesign and reconceive a big part of the hotel. For its first hotel project in Paris, Maison Martin Margiela creates a theatrical environment where realty and trompe-l'oeil are mixing together. The results are several sets with intertwined references giving an atypical ambiance harmoniously opposing past and present.

"Together with Maison Martin Margiela, we are aiming at a luxurious yet relaxed place where minimalism of forms is matched with amazing details," says Bernadette Chevalier, president of Exclusive Hotels for Maison Champs-Elysees.