Edition of 5

Colour Super Gloss Ilfochrome (Cibachrome) in artist's frame.

The Principles of Political Economy from the series "Capital".

In Capital, Karen Knorr attempts to uncover those forgotten and repressed connections between the financial institutions and their historical and present relation to trade and industry. She is particularly concerned with the dense semiology of the objects of tradition: how those objects both embody the history of which they are a part, and also serve to reify that history and consign it to the seamless ideology of continuity. Nowhere is tradition treated with greater respect, or radicalism with more suspicion than in the City of London. The City is the symbol of the cutting edge of capitalism, yet it still retains elements of tradition which wrap it up in superstition. Capital is also about 'place' - her use of actual City institutions in many of the images (Lloyds Register of Shipping and The Freemason's Hall are examples) suggests the 'organic' connectedness of a class of people to their place. By giving us visual access to hitherto closed and unseen (exclusive and private) sites she indicates that command over social space is a fundamental and all-pervasive source of power in and over everyday life.
Jessica Evans in Portfolio Magazine, Summer 1991.


British Photography. The Hyman Collection.