Bio

California artist, Nicola Dill, was born in Hamburg, Germany. She studied in the History of Art and Ethnology program at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich before moving to New York to study Photography at The New School. She then came to Southern California to complete her B.F.A. with Honors at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Dill lives and works in the Los Angeles area for over 35 years.

For many years of her professional career Dill was primarily focused on portrait work for the entertainment industry, with assignments from a wide range of editorial clients, record companies and advertising. Her portraits of Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Joni Mitchell, Tina Turner, and many others have been published globally in prestigious venues from Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone to House and Garden and the New York and LA Times Magazines. Her commercial clients have included Adidas, BMG Music, Evian, Geffen Records, Microsoft, Sony Music, Virgin Records, VH-1 and Warner Music Group, among others.

Today her practice concentrates on independent projects. Some of her earlier projects are influenced by her interests both in Eastern philosophies and abstract art. Predominantly focused on nature, these projects reinterpret and transform her subject matter to near abstraction as an expression of her inner vision. Her current work takes visual inspiration in art that engages with questions of perception, light and space as she aims to bring the diversity of urban culture to the forefront. She was nominated for the Prix Pictet Fire in 2021.

Dill’s photographs and installations have been exhibited at institutions such as the Hammer Museum Art Gallery, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Southeast Museum of Photography in Florida. Her work is included in numerous public collections, including the George Eastman Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, the Special Collections of Stanford University and UCLA, the University Medical Center Hamburg, and Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University. Her photographs have also been the subject of a monograph and special edition: Sea Etchings (Nazraeli Press 2011 and 2012 respectively).

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