Over four decades, Collier Schorr has used photography to scrutinise the conditions and realities of contemporary subjectivity and what it means to visually represent a body - and a self. Motivated, in part, by an underlying search for alternatives to the desirous heterosexual gaze; her work has remained focused on several key themes including beauty, desire, selfhood, and masculinity and its discontents. Schorr’s early work was made in the 1980s and 1990s in New York and Germany, during the coalescence of postmodernism and identity politics. Her work from that period navigated the tension between documentary and fiction, and tested out the capacity of photography to unveil desire and repression, explore taboo identities, and highlight the contradictions inherent in subjectivity, especially in relation to gender norms. In more recent times, the artist has incorporated dance into her practice predominantly through adapting Chantal Ackerman’s film, ‘Je Tu Il Elle’ (1975), into a full-length filmed ballet performance featuring Schorr as Ackerman and a core group of professional dancers collaborating to create a multi-channel video installation.

Collier Schorr was born in New York City in 1963, and she continues to live and work there. Her photographs have been the subject of solo exhibitions at KOW, Berlin (2021); Alice Austen House, Staten Island (2019); Modern Art, London (2018); 303 Gallery, New York (2014); Le Consortium, Dijon (2008); Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2008); and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2007). Schorr has participated in recent group exhibitions at Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2022); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2020); Aperture Foundation, New York (2019); Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson (2019); Nottingham Contemporary (2018); São Paulo Museum of Art (2017); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017); and The Jewish Museum, New York (2017). Her works are held in collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; MoMA, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford. Schorr is also a writer, and has contributed texts to publications such as Artforum, Parkett, and Frieze.