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Photographer, New York

Guna S. Mundheim Fellow in the Visual Arts - Class of Spring 2008


Best known for her portraits of adolescent men and women, Collier Schorr’s images often blend photographic realism with elements of fiction and youthful fantasy. However, her project There I Was (SteidlMack, 2007), represented a shift in both medium and concept for Schorr. It mixed both photographs and drawings to tell the story of a young race-car driver from Astoria, Queens, who was killed in the Vietnam War after only four weeks of service. As the driver, Charlie “Astoria Chas” Snyder was photographed by Schorr’s father, the book ultimately addresses the difficulty of representing the past without the “theatricality of restaging it.” Schorr’s other recent projects include Jens F. (SteidlMack, 2005), in which she created a comprehensive yet unusual portrait of a young man by photographing a German schoolboy posed as Helga, the housewife whom American painter Andrew Wyeth studied in secret for nearly twenty years.

 
In addition to her many published projects, Schorr’s works are in the permanent collections of several major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, among others. She has exhibited at such venues as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Jewish Museum in New York, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Schorr’s work was featured in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and the 2003 International Center for Photography Triennial. She is a senior critic for the graduate photography program at the Yale University School of Art.

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