Karen Crisp is a photographer from Auckland, New Zealand. Her interest in photography was kindled during the 1990s when she was residing in London. This led her to completing an honours degree majoring in photography at the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades (now the London Institute).

 

Upon her return to New Zealand she secured work as a technician at Unitec in Auckland. In 2007 she embarked on a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts at the Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in 2008.

 

She won the Elam School of Fine Arts Photography Prize in 2008, and was the recipient of the Barfoot & Thomson Emerging Artist Award at the Glaister Ennor Graduate Awards, 2009. Karen was also a nominee in the Team McMillan Art Awards in 2010, and a finalist in the NZ Painting & Printmaking Awards, held in Hamilton in 2013.

 

Karen Crisp’s practice is concerned with the idea of landscape as an historical, conceptual, cultural and intricately physical construct. She is interested in landscape that cannot be read or understood at a glance, but reveals itself slowly and in contradictory ways. Her photographs are an example of a post-documentary practice.