About Karen Jordan
With a photograph of a lifeguard in the swimming pool, 8-year-old KAREN JORDAN of Wheeling, WV, won her first photographic competition with a KODAK Brownie camera. Many cameras and images later, she has received jurors’ awards for her documentary portraits in B&W, her color landscapes and seascapes, still life, wildlife, abstract, and people photography.
Her exhibitions and awards include Honorable Mention Winner Award (2021, 2022, 2023) and previously an Honor of Distinction 3rd Place Winner Award in the prestigious International Color Awards competition, accumulating Color Awards recognition in eight fine art categories. Other recent recognitions include Gold and Silver Muse Photography Awards (2021), Honorable Mention, International Photography Awards Competition (2020, 2021); Federal Reserve Board permanent collection acquisitions (six), Washington, DC; and solo shows at Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art (10 works), Midland, MI; Jones Troyer Gallery, Washington, DC, Harrison Gallery, Key West, FL., McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA, National Association of Social Workers, San Francisco, CA, Fairfax County Art in Public Places and Fairfax Judicial Center, Fairfax, VA. Group exhibitions include the Washington Design Center, Washington, DC; Washington Print Club’s 50th Anniversary Biennial Exhibition at the Katzen Arts Center, American University; Faber Birren National Color Award Show, Stamford, CT; Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, New York, NY, L2kontemporary Gallery, Los Angeles, and Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Cosmos Club, Foundry Gallery, Touchstone Gallery (First place, Juror’s Award), Corcoran School of Art and Corcoran Annual Art Auction, Capitol Hill Art League and Brandeis Juried Art Exhibition, Washington, DC.
She studied photography and digital imaging at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC, holds a B.S. degree from the University of Illinois, and attended Columbia University’s graduate Program in the Arts. Before committing to her passion for photography full-time, she worked at NBC-TV News in New York, was a press secretary to a congressman on Capitol Hill and handled shareholder relations for a major corporation in Washington, DC. Her work is included in a number of important corporate and private collections in Washington, DC, NY, FL, MD, VA, AZ, NV, CA and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Franklin Kelly, an art historian and curator.
About The Work
It was very, very difficult for me to leave the traditional - the analog - world of photography for my exhibition work and I didn’t do so until maybe nine years ago. Up until then, I printed myself, or had printed through outstanding labs or ateliers, my black-and-white and color images from slides or negatives, printing them full-frame, i.e., uncropped, and unmanipulated. I printed only what I saw on the negative or on the “chrome” (slide). All but a very few of the images in the Urban Images portfolio and in the Water Images and Archive portfolios are such straight photographs. Many of the dramatic abstract large-scale landscapes or waterscapes appear to have been painted, but they are entirely through-the-lens abstractions and a true representation of nature, as it existed when I recorded it on film. I often refer to these as “constructed abstracts.”
During the early 90s, I studied digital imaging with one of the great innovators in digital printing - David Adamson. I eventually realized that I was often making electronic photomontages and manipulating images because I could, not always because the aesthetic of the image warranted doing so. What I came to realize is that I wanted to create the kind of images I did on the computer but without the computer. So I evolved my way of looking at objects by seeing them as a digital image but keeping faith with my traditionalist photography in the way I recorded and printed them. I frequently find inspiration for my work from being near or on water, and many of my images will have water in some form in them.