Long term readers of this blog might remember my interest in photobooks that use text. As such, you will likely be unsurprised to find that I preordered Karen Knorr‘s Country Life direct from Stanley/Barker minutes after reading the announcement. In the unlikely event that this is your first visit: welcome! FYI, and if you haven’t gathered this fact already: I have a strong interest in photobooks that use text.
Karen Knorr modeled her Country Life series on a long running magazine of the same name of which I was previously unaware. I have no idea what late-1970s and early-1980s ‘Country Life’ looked like, and a brief look at the current web magazine shows a distinct—and perhaps knowing and long-practiced—lack of self awareness. I suspect Knorr intended to lampoon this in her now 40 year old project, and I wonder how it played in mid-1980s galleries and museums. I bet it worked back then, depending on who was looking, and, short answer: it still works.
The series arose from a Photograhers’ Gallery commission for a group exhibition called “Britain in 1984,” that focused on changes in society brought about by technology. Knorr largely ignored the brief and “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.”* Forty-odd years on, I assume things remain the same in Britain; they certainly do in the US, if not even more so, and it’s little wonder that Stanley/Barker felt the time was right to publish Country Life in book form.
The photographs themselves feature very well appointed interiors and artfully unspoiled landscapes, sometimes populated with handsome, mostly young, and very well dressed young men, taking part in acts of leisure. Taken alone, one could read them in a few different ways. Knorr forestalls most alternate readings by attaching pithy statements to each picture that make her intent clear, if a bit pointed in a way only a younger person would be. I know art made in my teens and twenties lacked the guarded knowingness of my “mature” nonsense, and, yes, I’m just projecting. Knorr knows what she’s doing, and knew what she was doing forty years ago too.**
A brief description of some pictures may help clarify what I mean.
The cover image—(sub-)titled “A mood of Highly Coloured Naturalism.”—features a young man, reclining on the banks of a river, near a little waterfall. It appears he fell asleep while reading a book of art history with a rifle by his side. What a charmed life he must live, napping peacefully after some (unsuccessful) time hunting quail or something, with a nice picture book on hand, hair still carefully combed, with spotless clothes and boots. Maybe his valet already cleaned everything up and carried off the catch?
“Scenery of Lonely Places where Man lies concealed as Hunter.” is an interior detail of a desk: teacup and saucer painted with a hunting scene; half full ashtray; desk blotter with ink stains, a pocket watch, an unreadable note, and what looks like a set of Islamic prayer beads***; an ink pot and brushes; a lamp with a Greek goddess or something for a base; an plate with remnants of a snack or something on it; an organizer for letters and files; and several books, the most visible of which is The Big Shots: Edwardian Shooting Parties, by Johnathan Ruffer, with a forward by HRH The Prince of Wales, (now, of course, King Charles III).
A man in a dark suit stands at a large plinth and flips through a book of master work paintings (I think). The background appears to feature the entry gates and driveway for a mansion (or museum). “Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste.” indeed.
I appreciate what Knorr did for this body of work and I’m sympathetic to her project, I think. Overall, the book feels sumptuous and I’m glad I bought it, though it might be more at home in some of Knorr’s interior photographs. I wonder if “Country Life” subscribers see Country Life in the same way I do…
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Overall, Country Life rates a respectable 3.5 stars.
At time of writing, Country Life remains available direct from Stanley/Barker, and you can view the project in its entirety on Knorr’s website.
*Knorr, Karen. Country Life artists statement. Retrieved from https://karenknorr.com/photography/country-life/ July 29 2025.
**Looking into her Archive, Knorr kept up the same sort of format for most of the 1980s and slowly morphed into her mature work, where she photographs luxe interiors of homes, museums, historical and religious buildings, and composites people and animals into them, often in an obvious sort of way. Earlier work had pithy titles; more recent work has more directly narrative or descriptive titles. Later work remains at least partly political and fairly obvious, and obviously more “mature,” whatever that means. I was most interested in Questions (2017-2018), photographs of commercial and industrial construction sites, artificially solarized and titled with a long story arc, which is very different from her other work, in photographic content anyway.
***A Misbaha or “tasbih,” with 33 or 99 beads to aid in glorifying God by reciting “SubhanAllah,” “Alhamdulillah,” and “Allahu Akbar,” 33 times each. I tend to use the joints of my fingers.