Glaser, Karen

Karen Glaser has been shooting underwater since the 1980s, from saltwater oceans to freshwater springs to local swimming pools. Fish, manatees, swells of swamp grass, or the occasional diver take their turn in front of the lens. Sometimes the composition features a solitary creature surrounded by water, while at other times the view is much denser, filling the frame fully with schools of fish or elements of the submerged landscape. Although Glaser has worked in color for many of her recent series, her earlier black-and-white photographs, such as Dome Amid the Water (2000), harness the grainy quality resulting from using a 35mm camera with available light in the water to heighten the atmosphere or even a sense of strangeness.

Karen Glaser received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri (1976) and her MFA in photography from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana (1980). She is the recipient of awards from Illinois Arts Council (2003, 1999, and 1985), a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Regional Fellowship (1991), and a Ford Foundation Fellowship (1977). Exhibitions including her work have been held at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC; Centro Colombo Americano in Medllín, Colombia; Aperture’s Burden Gallery, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; LaSalle Bank, Chicago; Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville, Kentucky; and The Illinois Collection, State of Illinois Center, Chicago. She taught at Columbia College Chicago from 1980 until 2012.