Karen Asher: Strange Days Indeed
Karen Asher Legs 2008
Karen Asher’s portraits of strangers and acquaintances in the urban landscape of her hometown, Winnipeg, offer an unusual and unnerving intimacy between the viewer and her subjects. Neither formal portraits nor snapshots, the photos occupy an uneasy liminal space where the relationship between sitter and photographer is uncertain and unseen power dynamics haunt otherwise banal street photographs. In her debut solo exhibition, “No Cause for Concern,” currently on view at Winnipeg’s Platform, Asher offers 15 images from her most recent series of photos, including several shots of friends and family awkwardly posed for the camera and a sequence of unsettling images of her mother in the hospital. As Asher writes in her artist statement, her photos work to “capture a surreal image from an ordinary moment,” lending even the most familiar and everyday spaces a sense of strange alienation. (121-100 Arthur St, Winnipeg MB)
Karen Asher Welleh 2008
Karen Asher Mom & Man 2009
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