Mona Kuhn was born in Germany, raised in Brazil and later immigrated to the United States. She received her B.A. degree from Ohio State University in 1993 and later went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute and The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Mona Kuhn employs a visual language that is at once classical and contemporary. In her photographs she weaves together gestures taken from traditional iconography with the natural body language of her subjects. She does this with a fluidity and grace that comes from both intimacy with her subjects and a highly skilled mastery of the medium.

Mona Kuhn does more than merely present the body to the viewer. Beneath the calm, relaxed surfaces of her photographs lies an explosive energy: the artist’s controlled play with the power of sensuality. The compositions incorporate the flow of volume with tenuously held planes of focus that tempt the viewer and provoke the imagination. Each image explores dualities of human experience. Tension and uneasiness co-exist with sunlight and soft flesh. The subjects and their gestures are suggestive yet ultimately ambiguous. With only sparse reference to physical surroundings, the bodies seem to float in an idyllic picture space, part of a dreamlike narrative that exists just beyond the viewer’s comprehension.

Mona Kuhn’s photographs exist in a space created by the artist and subject alone, of which the viewer is given a single fascinating glimpse, suspended in time, where one senses the resilience and vulnerability of the human body. The artist works very close to her subjects, often with a depth of field of only a few inches. This closeness reflects her intimate relationship with her subjects and also creates an almost tactile picture surface. Real world and image world seem to blend together as her figures bring with them the blissful essence of nature and the soiled reality of human complexity.