A YOUNG NOBLEMAN'S INTRODUCTION TO KNOWLEDGE

© Karen Knorr

A YOUNG NOBLEMAN'S INTRODUCTION TO KNOWLEDGE 1983/85

Karen Knorr (1954 – )

Details

Dimension
61 X 50.8 CM
Media
SILVER PRINT WITH TEXT
Accession number
P6163

Summary

‘The photograph formed part of a series of fourteen images with text. They were taken in London, Scotland and Oxfordshire in domestic interiors and gardens laid out according to the picturesque canons of the eighteenth century. The work was commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery for a group exhibit entitled Britain in 1984. Although I was asked to document changes that new technologies had created, I chose instead to refer to the attitudes and activities of the British landed gentry, These were aspects of Britain in 1984 that had changed little. Country Life, like my earlier works Belgravia (1979-81) and Gentlemen (1981-83), parodies class attitudes, the received ideas of the affluent Thatcher¹ years. This series differs, in that I appropriate the still life and landscape genres to plot the traces of the Leisure Class. Nature, like the objects photographed, is property. Objects inside and outside serve to commemorate past family histories. Looking at Country Lifealmost ten years later, the development of Major’s² classless society seems far off. A class-ridden society survives. Social networks based on favour, privilege and accidents of birth continue despite new technologies and progress.

¹ Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister 1979-1990.


² John Major, British Prime Minister 1990-1997

Documentary Dilemmas Aspects of British Documentary Photography 1983-1993, The British Council 1994