Karen Glaser

(b.1954; resides Chicago, IL)

Dome Amid the Waters, 2000

Great Blue Heron at Three Sisters Spring, 2000

Monday Afternoon at Silver Glen Spring, 2002

Karen Glaser has been shooting underwater for two decades, from saltwater oceans to freshwater springs to local swimming pools. While this portfolio includes a few unpopulated seascapes and a few pictures from just above the surface, it concentrates on the life in the water. Fish, manatees, a seal, and the occasional dive partner each take their turn before the lens. Sometimes the composition features a solitary creature surrounded by water, while at other times the view is a school so dense it fully fills the frame, but always the combination of available light and a 35mm camera mean a distinctively grainy style that further abstracts these strange and rarely seen places.

Karen Glaser received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, Kanas City, Missouri (1976) and her MFA in photography from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana (1980). She is the recipient of awards from the Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, and Ford Foundation. Exhibitions including her work have been held at the Smithsonian Institutions’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC; Centro Colombo Americano in Medellín, Colombia; and Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida. In 2002, for Aquascapes: Miami Seaport Project, she installed sixteen 6-by-9 foot images on top of a 226-by-8 foot mural. A custom black and white photographic printer in Chicago, Karen Glaser has also taught at Columbia College Chicago since 1980.

- Kendra Greene