Canadian-American photographer Lynne Cohen (Racine, Wisconsin, United States, 1944 – Montreal, Canada, 2014) studied etching, sculpture and painting. In 1973 she moved to Canada and the following year became a professor at the University of Ottawa.

Interested in North American vernacular culture, Cohen began her photographic career in 1971 with a series of works in black and white depicting public and private interiors—such as living rooms, offices, and beauty salons—that would influence the rest of her artistic trajectory. In the 1980s she began to focus on spaces related to societal control, such as laboratories, classrooms, and police stations. In the 1990s she became interested in sites that were antithetical to her previous motifs, for example spas and factories. From the 2000s she continued her study of interior spaces but began to work in color photography. Using a view camera in order to achieve a direct and neutral image, Cohen addressed the relationship between desolate spaces and their inhabitants, whom she never portrayed.

Lynne Cohen was influenced by photographers such as Eugène Atget and Bernd and Hilla Becher, but also by creators in other disciplines such as Jacques Tatí in film, and the musician David Byrne. She received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2005 and the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2011, among other accolades.