Karen Knorr: &quot;India Song&quot;, 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