‘I have always thought of photography as problematic,’ says New York-based photographer Collier Schorr [b. 1963]. ‘I think some of the problems are solved by working long enough to address the issues – or to settle into the reality of the practice. I was always worried about taking pictures of women, which is why I shot boys for the first ten years of my career.’
(Image credit score: Collier Schorr x Modern Art)
For 4 a long time, Schorr has untangled the challenges in visually representing the physique together with her pictures which embrace the contradictions inherent in each identification and a extra mainstream definition of magnificence. Her work, together with pictures, collages, video and drawings, encompasses fields together with style images, which she took up within the nineties, partly as a technique to tackle the issue of signify feminine and queer identities.
(Image credit score: Collier Schorr x Modern Art)
Schorr continues to puzzle away at these issues, going through them head-on within the present exhibition at Modern Art in Paris. Problems and Other Stories – the title taken from a John Updike assortment of quick tales from the seventies – resists straightforward classification. Emotion, power and energy line the curves of the artists and performers in Schorr’s portraits right here.
(Image credit score: Collier Schorr x Modern Art)
Included are works sparked by others, together with Milo Cassidy, a trans man that Schorr has been working with for the previous two years. ‘The works featuring Milo in this new show were kind of full circle: someone like me, but not walking around in the same identity,’ says Schorr. ‘For this show, the people may be less my problem and more: why am I a problem for others? How gender ‘problems’ others. The sentence is intentional. But that wouldn’t be the present’s overarching mandate. Many our bodies of labor are floating round, however that may very well be a website of rigidity for all of them.’
For Schorr, the work turns into much less about an understanding between artist and topic as she progresses all through her profession. ‘I used to see myself as the old woman in the shoe, with so many subjects I didn’t know what to do. It’s much less like that for the time being due to the sense of neighborhood I share with individuals like Milo.’
The exhibition at Modern Art, Paris
(Image credit score: Collier Schorr x Modern Art)
Other works within the exhibition, together with collages and pictures, are drawn from Schorr’s video set up, Akerman Ballet, that includes seven dancers, together with Schorr. Following her ballet and fashionable dance coaching in 2018, she started working extra intensively in ballet prematurely of her full-scale adaptation Chantal Akerman’s 1974 movie, Je tu il elle.
‘I was so happy to escape using my eyes – or even my voice. There’s a fast dialogue earlier than every scene is danced, after which I disappear into directing with my physique – or being pushed by one other physique. There is a distinct sort of launch and discovery [that comes with dancing]. In the start, I felt a frustration that I didn’t have a digicam in my arms, however I’ve lengthy forgotten that, as a result of for 90 per cent of the time, I don’t have it and don’t miss it. I just like the look of an automatic recording, and after I do decide it up, it feels actually intentional.’
Collier Schorr, ‘Problems and Other Stories’ at Modern Art Paris till 4 April 2026
(Image credit score: Collier Schorr x Modern Art)