Karen Elson might be the most photographed person in Nashville. Her modeling career began when Steven Meisel photographed her for the cover of Vogue Italia when she was 18. Since then, she’s been on more than 100 magazine covers — 48 of them for Vogue — and in ad campaigns for Gucci, Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Name a living major fashion photographer and she’s likely worked with them. But when the pandemic struck, she wasn’t able to travel to meet photographers in New York or London. That’s how her collaboration with photographer Emily Dorio began.
“I’ve known Emily for ages,” Elson tells the Scene. “But during the pandemic, it became sort of a necessity that I had a great photographer here in Nashville who I could work with, because it was difficult to travel to, say, New York, when New York was really in lockdown, and I had shoots I had to do, or contractual obligations. I thought, How am I going to do this safely? I can’t fly to New York, there has to be somebody here. A few friends suggested Emily, and we worked together, and we connected.”
“I feel like somehow I’ve won the lottery to have Karen as a playmate,” Dorio says. “It’s not often in this stage of life that you have someone to create with.”
In the three years since that first shoot, Elson and Dorio have continued to work together — first for Elson’s modeling work, and more recently for Elson’s third album, 2022’s Green.
“Emily did all the artwork for that,” Elson says. “That was an opportunity when we didn’t have somebody breathing down our necks with a directive. We were able to get wild and creative, and it was a real collaboration and a way for us to stretch our own visionary muscles.
“I’ve been in fashion for such a long time,” Elson continues, “and with music, the challenge for me is to have the visuals match the level of what I do in fashion, while also being in its own world. So with Emily, it was the perfect creative collaboration. She’s got a vision, she’s an amazing photographer, and we were both able to come up with an idea — come up with many ideas — and just really flesh them out until the end, without having the sort of shadow that you have on most shoots, which is people questioning whether something is too dark or too edgy. We did it for ourselves, and that in turn led to many other shoots that were just for ourselves.”
The works in See You Me include large-format photographic prints, digital projections, multimedia sculptures and Super 8 film shot by another collaborator, Nashville-based cinematographer Mika Matinazad. Themes of muse and goddess, covens and communes repeat throughout the work.
“When the Parthenon was generous enough to offer us the space, it just felt like the perfect altar to lay it all out on,” says Dorio. “It feels like where the goddess lives.”
Elson agrees that the Parthenon is a wonderful setting for the exhibit, and points to the abundance of creative energy in Nashville.
“This town is exploding with creativity,” she says. “Obviously, Nashville is known for its great music, and we know that, but there’s so much more. There’s a thriving creative community in so many mediums, from how many brilliant writers live here to how many brilliant artists live here. Even the sculpture of Athena in the Parthenon, which was by a local artist, [Alan] LeQuire. There’s just so much happening here right now.”
As a model, Elson is surely used to being not only the subject, but also the vessel for a photographer’s vision. Dorio’s photographs, however, center Elson — not just her face and body, but her vision. In one standout photo, Elson’s eye is spotlighted in sharp contrast to the otherwise moody, deep-green haze. Her face spirals around her head like a fractal, with the lit eye working like a constant reminder of her participation in the work. Here she is clearly seeing, not just being seen.
“This is my first exhibition,” Dorio says. “I’ve had work in other shows, but this is the first time I’m presenting an entire body of work. What an honor to do it with Karen.”
