Nadia Lee Cohen
A child of the nineties, Nadia Lee Cohen (1992) grew up on an isolated farm in the English countryside where her parents helped build sets for her earliest photography and film projects in their garage. Her recent collaboration with Martin Parr, the photobook Julie Bullard, in which she plays a fictional version of her childhood babysitter, is a visual illustration of the world she called her own, until her early twenties, when she took herself off to Los Angeles.
Cohen creatively relocated herself in LA in search of the Hollywood scenery that inspired her only to find the real Hollywood Boulevard was one of trashy stores and broken dreams. This sad but true reality became her new source of inspiration. Her photographs and films are character-driven visions of saturated and surreal dreamscapes that capture the manifest pleasures and visceral terrors of the urban environment.
In 2020, her first book Women was published. Six years in the making; the book featured 100 previously unseen portraits resulting in a heartbreaking work of theatrical ambiguity and naked honesty. Women is now in its sixth edition having sold 10,000 copies. Her second book, composed of prosthetically enhanced self-portraits, Hello, My Name Is, gave its name to her first major solo gallery show staged at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles. Works from the first two book projects shared the vast gallery space with video installations and sculptural works. A major critical and commercial success, the show became a landmark on the LA cultural landscape as it was extended through the summer of 2022.
An artist, photographer and filmmaker, Nadia Lee Cohen works inside popular culture. Cinema, commercials, shopping malls and all the lurid leftovers of Western consumerism inspire her art, which then re-enters the mass media in the form of magazine covers, music videos, fashion shoots and Instagram posts. As each circle completes, another level of commentary, criticism and, indeed, popularity is reached. In the worlds of high and low art, Nadia Lee Cohen is raising the floor to reach the bar, as evidenced by her now iconic Rihanna and Lana del Rey Interview Magazine covers or the Kim Kardashian and Macauley Culkin music video made with Charlie Denis in 2024 that The Mail published three successive articles about in an attempt to decided whether it had actually cancelled Christmas.
As a film director, Nadia has worked with Beyoncé, Tyler the Creator and A$AP Rocky amongst many others and her music videos and commercials have been lauded and awarded by jurors of the Cannes Golden Lions, VMAs, SXSW, Berlin Film Festival and Rolling Stone. Most recently, she sent Zendaya into space for On Running and directed two of her own heroes, John Waters and Kyle Machlachlan in campaigns for YSL and Balenciaga respectively. Recent photographic highlights include shooting Juliane Moore, Chloë Sevigny and, for a special issue of Perfect Magazine, Kate Moss and Ray Winstone together in the hugely endearing love story I’m Not Finished With You Yet.
Arguably her ultimate subject is herself. Nadia has been profiled by Interview, Artnet, Vogue, Dazed, i-D and The Sunday Times. She appears as herself, and as a front row guest at fashion shows and events. These personal appearances blur the lines between artistry and celebrity, and that is her peculiar art. Her most recent appearance as a 50 ft woman bestriding Sunset Blvd for Instagram and Meta, made the point very clearly - Nadia Lee Cohen is bigger than ever.
