Karen LaVallee Norton is a photographer, digital artist and feminist scholar. She is Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Imaging in the Division of Art and Design in the School of Liberal Arts at Purdue University. She has also held faculty appointments at Cornell University and Ithaca College.

Her exhibition at the Lycoming Art Gallery incorporates her research into 19^th century medical photography. Some time ago, Norton suffered a sudden near-fatal illness. As a result, the visual artist found herself drawn to the photographs of anonymous, long-forgotten patients whose vulnerability before the 19^th century camera resonated with her own experience of having been subjected to the unrelenting, invasive and dehumanizing 20^th-century medical "gaze."

Her photography and digital collage work, which concerns the intersections of the history of art, personal memory, and cultural representations of the body, has been widely exhibited.

She is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Light Work Individual Photographer's Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography, and most recently her digital collage series, En Memorium, was awarded first prize in Soho Photo Gallery’s 2001 National Juried Exhibition. She holds a BA in photography, summa cum laude, from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, and an MFA from Cornell University. 

The exhibition continues through ___ It is free and open to the public.

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