Nadia Lee Cohen is a British art photographer, filmmaker and self-portrait artist. She is inspired by British and American cinema of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
Career
In 2011 Lee Cohen attended the London College of Fashion and began studying photography. She cites Hitchcock's The Birds, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Harmony Korine's Gummo, John Waters's Pink Flamingos and Stanley Kubrik's The Shining amongst her initial inspirations. In 2012 a particular scene involving a dog costume from The Shining inspired Lee to create the portrait "American Nightmare", an image which resulted in her becoming the 2012 recipient of National Portrait Gallery, London's Taylor Wessing Portrait prize. The photograph was described by critic Sean O'Hagan in The Guardian as having 'an edginess that was missing elsewhere in the show'. In 2013, she continued to study for a master's degree in fashion photography at London College of Fashion. Meanwhile, spurred on by her love of narrative in cinema and cinematic photography she collected 1960s and 70s props and furniture and began constructing surrealistic Lynchian sets in a spare room at her parents’ house on a shoestring student budget. In 2014, Lee won a Better Lives Award from the London College of Fashion which allowed her to travel across the west coast of America and document a series of images. These were displayed in an exhibition at the Victoria House Gallery in London. Lee accentuates the glamorous decadence of the 50s and 60s in America. Often naked her over-stereotyped humans become supernatural characters of her ‘visual fiction’. Lee speaks of being heavily inspired by Philip-Lorca diCorcia's project Hustlers. In 2015 Lee graduated from the London College of Fashion and made her second trip to America to begin her personal series 100 Naked Women as a direct response to the rise of online female censorship. Lee carefully selects the women to feature, stages scenes and constructs narratives for each girl to act out the character she has previously imagined. The few images that have been released from the naked women series have sparked vast interest amongst numerous publications. Juxtapoz describe them to be: ‘beautifully polished and conceptually compelling’; whilst the Huffington Post and New York Magazine describe them to be influenced by the work of Cindy Sherman. Lee appeared on French Television channel Canal+ and discussed the project in detail in an interview with Antoine De Caunes in which De Caunes described her as ‘the most exciting photographer of the moment’. In 2016 Lee gained notoriety through her online presence on social media channel Instagram in which her own image sometimes replaces the characters in her photographs. In 2017 Lee directed the music video "Gilligan" by rapper Dram ft. A$AP Rocky and Juicy J as well as the music video "After The Storm" by Kali Uchis ft. Tyler, The Creator and Bootsy Collins.
