Nadia Lee Cohen

Nadia Lee Cohen is a British photographer, filmmaker and self portrait artist based in Los Angeles. In 2011 Lee Cohen attended the London College of Fashion and began studying photography. In 2012 she was included in the prestigious Taylor Wessing Portrait prize and exhibited her work in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

In 2015, having graduated, she relocated to America to begin her ambitious personal book project ‘100 Women’; the project being a direct response to the rise of female censorship. This ongoing narrative driven series features hyper-staged cinematic portraits of women in varying states of nudity.

In addition to her personal artwork, she has created commercial work for companies and publications such as; Valentino, Maison Margiela. Miu Miu, Adidas, MAC Cosmetics, and many more. She has created music videos and short films with celebrities such as Sophia Loren, Pamela Anderson, Katy Perry, Danny Trejo, A$AP Rocky, Tyler the Creator and Bootsy Collins among others.

"When you look at Cohen’s works, you see this magical blackhole that includes everything from Stanley Kubrick to Cindy Sherman," writes Valentino's Head of Branding Projects Yigit Turhan in a press release for Nadia Lee Cohen. Not a Retrospective currently showing at La Térmica in Málaga, Spain. the English photographer and director has already made waves with her eccentric portraits inspired by cinema and pop culture.

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Rather than contributing to the over saturated of imagery of mundane societal beauty, Nadia Lee Cohen offers up something different. She challenges the ideals of modern beauty standards while adding a satyrical, distorted, and exaggerated image of beauty.

Alfred Hitchcock, in particular, has shaped Nadia’s visual artistry. Along with a distinguished use of cinematography and careful colour consideration, the photographer evaluates how “Hitchcock was the master of creating a disquieting effect in a familiar setting. He would achieve this without the use of a single physical object; merely an expression of longing or despair on the subject’s face paired with an extreme close up.”

"The world I photograph and create doesn’t reside in the same world that we live in,” “It does not share or possess the same beauty norms, politics or social values” and, as a consequence, what she creates is “a much freer place to live in”. Whether she’s shooting a commercial for Miu Miu or reimagining Pamela Andersen being fatefully shot to death by a blonde in a baby-pink two-piece, Nadia’s stylised vision of Lynchian haute-couture is full of enigma and impact.

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