Artists speak: Collier Schorr.

Collier Schorr is a photographer. Exploring gender, identity, war, history, and nationality, Schorr's photographs often blur the lines between fiction and reality, Following certain themes, Schorr has recently concentrated on the dynamics of high school wrestling, young soldiers, and the paintings of Andrew Wyeth.

"War is about losing innocence. And the war pictures were particularly about that journey.... The first soldier pictures I took were of Herbert and his friends. They all collected army stuff and they would go on campouts, play army, and raid each other's bunks. I was really surprised to find out that all the army stuff was American and that they were dressing up as Americans, in a territory that was in fact occupied by American soldiers."

"There's not a single intention that I want people to walk away with when they look at the body of work. Rather, I want people to luxuriously stroll amongst the pictures and look with curiosity, and marvel at what we've done ... that people from different places, different ages could go on this sort of journey together and make this collaboration, that is really equal parts history, fantasy, documentary, realism, appropriation. But it's not about a specific cause or identity struggle. It's about internationality and androgyny, costume design and military history, landscaping and geography."

One of the roots of my work was that I always wanted to steal into my brother's life.

I picked wrestling [as a subject of photography] because for me it felt like what it was like to be in school, a struggle. I loved the way the guys looked, that they were shorter--my size--that they were doing something that made them small outcasts within the community. They were not doing a popular sport. It was a sport that people didn't watch, that was really difficult and demanded a lot of them, emotionally and intellectually."

Born: 1963, New York, NY Lives and Works: Brooklyn, NY Media and Materials: Photography Influences: Gender, military uniforms, World War II, German and Jewish social history, wrestling, August Sander, Andrew Wyeth

About the Artist

Best known for her photographic portraits of adolescent men and women, Collier Schorr's pictures often blend photographic realism with elements of fiction and youthful fantasy. Recently, Schorr returned to her high school to photograph the school's wrestling team and began a body of photographs that capture young wrestlers as they experience the triumphs and defeats of adolescent athletics. Of Jewish heritage, Schorr first traveled to Germany in 1989 with an interest in the history that led to World War II and the Holocaust. While there, she was befriended by a German family. Returning each summer over the past fourteen years to visit them, Schorr has photographed local boys wearing the military uniforms and accessories they collect. Several of these young men reappear in Schorr's 2001 project Forests and Fields, in which they are dressed in an assortment of German, Israeli, Weimar (Nazi), and Vietnam-era American Army uniforms. Schorr's images not only call into question the role of soldiering in today's society, but also examine the way nationality, gender, and sexuality influences an individual's identity.

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