Gigi Cohen: Biography

Gigi Cohen, a New York–based photographer, began her career working for New York Newsday.

She is now a freelance photographer specializing in documentary photography and portraiture, focusing on a wide range of social issues, from incarceration to AIDS to children’s rights. Her photographs have appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine (London), The Independent on Sunday, L’Express, British Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, LIFE, and Der Spiegel, among others.

Cohen has worked in South Africa, Hong Kong, India, Poland, the Caribbean, and throughout the United States. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, in San Francisco, London, Leeuwarden, Madrid, Durban, Melbourne, Zurich, and New York City.

Self-funded, long-term projects include death-row inmate Philip Workman in Tennessee; a group of street children living in a home in Soweto, South Africa; and an 89-year-old junk collector in Brooklyn. Cohen’s emotional commitment to the people she photographs keeps her returning to these subjects.

Currently, Cohen has a grant from Kids with Cameras to work with child domestic workers in Haiti. The project is a continuation of her work for Child Labor and the Global Village: Photography for Social Change. In 2004, she was a fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts.