Karen Numme is a Photographer based in Los Angeles, creating images everywhere.
I create disorienting, layered worlds where light fractures, reflections collide, and nothing stays still.
My training in architecture and landscape design (Harvard, University of New Mexico, Parsons/NYU) taught me to see space as something constructed – built from angles, thresholds, and shifting perspectives. My earlier work used metal, plexiglass, and spray paint to break apart light and language, scattering words and particles across monochromatic surfaces. Those pieces have been shown in museums and galleries across the US.
Now I work with photography – specifically, the iPhone – building composites and reflections that refuse to resolve into a single image. I'm after the moment when your eye can't quite settle, when the scene feels familiar and foreign at once. I want viewers to step into that instability, lean into the disorder, and find their own way through.
I was born in the Bronx and have lived in New York, Boston, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles – cities that taught me how to see through glass, steel, and constant motion.