Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn is known for photographs that bring the human figure and the natural world into a shared visual language. For more than twenty-five years, she has explored organic form across bodies, landscapes, and interiors, treating each with the same formal care. Whether set in a French naturist community, the dense forests of her native Brazil, or the spare light of the Californian desert, her series are grounded in structure and atmosphere. Reflections, softened focus, and a disciplined attention to contour create a sustained dialogue between figure and environment that defines her practice.

Over the past two decades, Kuhn has developed a sequence of distinct yet interconnected series that mark key moments in her work. Evidence (2006) established her sustained engagement with the nude in nature, while Native (2009) returned to the forests of Brazil, deepening her dialogue between figure and landscape. Bordeaux Series (2011) and Private (2014) turned inward, focusing on intimacy and interior space, leading to the architecturally structured compositions of She Disappeared into Complete Silence (2018/19). With Bushes & Succulents (2018), plant forms assumed the scale and presence of portraiture, and in Kings Road (2022), Kuhn placed the figure in measured conversation with mid-century Los Angeles architecture. Together, these series trace a consistent investigation of form, light, and environment, offering collectors a body of work that is cohesive in vision and expansive in scope. 

Raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Kuhn lives and works in Los Angeles, where she is an independent scholar at the Getty Research Institute. In 2021, she received the Stieglitz Award for her contributions to fine art photography. Her work is held in significant public and private collections worldwide, including The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Kiyosato Museum in Japan, and the Lianzhou Photography Museum in China. Her photographs have been exhibited at institutions such as the Louvre Museum and Le Bal in Paris, the Whitechapel Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts in London, Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland, the Leopold Museum in Vienna, the Polygon Gallery in Vancouver, the Australian Centre for Photography, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.