Mona Kuhn

Internationally recognized for her alluring renderings of human form, Mona Kuhn weaves together gestures from the traditional iconography of nude studies with the comfortable body language of her subjects, creating a visual patois at once classical and contemporary. Beneath the mellow surfaces of her photographs lies an explosive energy: the artist's controlled play with the power of sensuality. The subjects and their gestures are suggestive, but ultimately ambiguous. Tenuously held planes of focus lure the eye and provoke the imagination. Mona Kuhn's second monograph with Steidl, entitled Evidence, was released in Spring 2007 with an essay by Gordon Baldwin and text by Frederic Tuten.



Mona Kuhn was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969, of German descent. She earned her degrees in the United States from both The Ohio State University and the San Francisco Art Institute. Since 1998 she has been an independent studies scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. Her work was nominated for the 2006 Prix Photographique BMW—ParisPhoto Award and has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, as well as in the United States. The images appearing in Evidence were photographed entirely in France, where she resides each summer. Currently, Mona Kuhn lives and works in Los Angeles.