Collier Schorr was born
in New York City in 1963 and attended the School of the Visual Arts,
New York. Best known for her portraits of adolescent men and women,
Schorr’s pictures often blend photographic realism with elements
of fiction and youthful fantasy. For her 1998 project “Neue
Soldatten,” Schorr
juxtaposed
documentary-style pictures of a Swedish army battalion with pictures
of fake Swedish soldiers played by German teenagers. Several of
these young men reappear in Schorr’s 2001 project “Forests
and Fields”, where this time they are dressed in an anxious
assortment of German, Israeli, Weimar (Nazi), and Vietnam-era American
Army uniforms. Schorr’s dubious images not only call into question
the fractured role of soldiering in today’s society, but also
examine the way nationality, gender, and sexuality influence an
individual’s
identity.
For her “Jens F./Helga” project, Schorr set out to create
a comprehensive, yet unusual portrait of a young man by photographing
a German schoolboy posed as Helga, the housewife whom American painter
Andrew Wyeth studied in secret for nearly twenty years. Whereas
in this body of work Schorr is comparing the way men and women pose
differently for the artist’s gaze, in photographs of American
high school and collegiate wrestlers the artist trains her camera
on a tribe of young men whose bodies and athletic training homogenize
personal differences. Schorr’s work was featured in the 2002
Whitney Biennial and the 2003 International Center for Photography
Triennial. Schorr has exhibited her work internationally at prestigious
venues that include the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Jewish
Museum in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Consorcio
Salamanca in Salamanca, Spain. Collier Schorr currently lives and
works in Brooklyn, New York.
For additional biographic & bibliographic information:
303 Gallery, New York |
