KAREN ELIZABETH BAKER

Karen Elizabeth Baker is an American fine artist that practices the investigation of image making, from the gelatin silver prints she made early on to her current engagement with digital platforms. Her work explores photography’s link to time, images that conflate memory to a moment outside of the temporal flow. Her foremost signature is capturing the mundane aspects of social landscape in straightforward unglamorous images

Baker studied photography and art history at UCLA and under artists Keith Carter, Roger Ballen, Shelby Lee Adams, Ed Freeman and Julie Blackmon She received a BFA in art and art history with a focus on photography from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has won awards from the New York Center for Photographic Art, the Los Angeles Center of Photography and Monochrome Black and White Photography Awards. Her work is in the collection of the Waiea, Ward Village, Honolulu.

Baker’s images reiterate various tropes about landscape photography, architectural photography, narrative photography still life photography, and various other contemporary – notably, color – photographic practice. Bakerʻs inspirations originate from William Eggelston’s pioneering work in color and the New Topographic photographers Robert Adams, Stephen Shore and Henry Wesselʻs exploration with man altered landscapes. A repeated theme in her work is the portrayal of spaces that seem devoid of human presence, creating tension due to the absence of their human inhabitants. This absence elevates the diverse range of everyday subjects into a cohesive body of artistic expression.