Karen Knorr was commissioned by Images au Centre 02 in June 2002 to produce work in response to the rooms and place of Cheverny Castle near Blois. She chose To pursue her explorations into the boundaries between the human and non human by photographing the stag hounds of the Cheverny pack which includes 200 hounds.

The Venery represents the stag hounds of the marquis of Vibraye as more than just animals under his domination. The titles of the work playfully allude to a precedent of hunting and sporting paintings and prints found throughout Europe in the homes of the gentry. Painters such as Oudry, Landseer and Stubbs created a popular genre were the natural was heroized and romanticised as something to be feared hence dominated by man. Here the dogs are portrayed individually and in groups suggesting polemically that perhaps they own the terrain Of Cheverny. As proprietors they enter the castle in search of the marquis who remains invisible.

Cheverny is a castle built in the 17th century by the Hurault family. Everyday during the summer months a staging of the feed of 80 hounds is held for the delectation of human spectators. This event seems to mimic in ritual manner the way the dogs could tear apart their prey (stags) The Cheverny hunt alongside the Somerset Hunt in England is the last to kill stags by hand ( a knife thrust into the stags jugular by the master of hounds.) Karen Knorr documented this staged feeding event in a 6 minute video called Colloque de Chiens (Dog Symposium).

10 photographs are hung in the rooms that were once inhabited by the Vibraye family as recently as 1985. The works replace family portaits and prints found in the living quarters currently on display to the general public from September 20 - November 20 2002