Mona Kuhn is best known for her large-scale photographs of the human form. Her approach is unusual in that she develops close relationships with her subjects, resulting in images of remarkable intimacy, rendering the subjects naked yet comfortable in their own skin.
Kuhn was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969, of German descent. In 1989, Kuhn moved to the U.S. and earned her B.A. from Ohio State University, before furthering her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is currently an independent scholar at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and occasionally teaches at UCLA and the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Kuhn’s first monograph, “Photographs,” was debuted by Steidl in 2004; followed by “Evidence” (2007), “Native” (2010), “Bordeaux Series” (2011), and “Private” (2014).
Kuhn’s work has been exhibited at The Louvre and Le Bal, Paris; Whitechapel Gallery and The Royal Academy of Arts, London; Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; The Leopold Museum, Vienna; and The Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. Her work is in private and public collections worldwide, including The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, Perez Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Kiyosato Museum in Japan.