about karen davis

As a photographer, Karen Davis works in the space between documentary and fine art photography, chronicling family and their social milieu. Her prints and artist books are in collections of the CPW, Kingston, NY; Lishui Museum of Photography, Lishui, China; Artist Book Collection, Houghton Rare Books Library, Harvard University; and featured in a permanent installation at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. She is the 2009 recipient of CPW’s Artist Fellowship Award and a 2018 Critical Mass Finalist.

Visit her artist site  YesThatKarenDavis

Davis holds a BS from Simmons College, Boston; MA (and abd) University of Chicago; AAS, Wentworth Institute of Technology. She has studied photography in classes and workshops at Massachusetts College of Art, Radcliffe Seminars, New England School of Photography and the International Center of Photography. Among her mentors is photographer Sylvia Plachy, an ongoing source of inspiration and guidance.

Davis was Curator/Co-Founder of Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY, from 2009 to 2024. The gallery specialized in photography, mixed media, and artist-published books. Her programming of emerging to established artists, often designed around issues of social significance, is well known in the region and, through the gallery’s website and social media, the national and international photographic community as well.

She has been invited to review portfolios and jury international events at Photolucida and Critical Mass, Portland OR; FotoFest, Houston TX; the Griffin Museum and CPW at Woodstock. In the Boston area, Davis was a long-time teacher of a unique course for established and emerging photographers, Photography Atelier, which she taught at Radcliffe Seminars, Art Institute of Boston/ Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, and the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA. She currently teaches the online Self-Published Photobook Workshop for the Griffin Museum.