Karen Elizabeth Baker

Biography/Artist Statement

Karen Elizabeth Baker is a photographic based 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. She sees the things behind what are actually in front of us, imagining history, family, memory, attempting to capture the essence of what is and reconcile the bittersweet longing for the past. She explores aspects of the human condition and the evolution of our social constructs.

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 analog 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 has participated in innumerable group shows and six solo shows in Los Angeles and Honolulu.

Her 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, the still lifes of Roger Ballen and the New Topographic photographers Robert Adams, Stephen Shore and Henry Wesselʻs exploration with man altered landscapes.