Laila Cohen is a photographer and visual artist based in Amsterdam. She works across portraiture, staged image-making and research. Her work centers women, with attention to intimacy, gesture and the body.
Raised in Amsterdam by a Dutch mother and a Jewish-Moroccan father, Cohen is drawn to how people carry themselves, and to the ways identity, memory and inheritance are shaped through relation. Her portraits are intimate and attentive, alive to fabric, color and light.
Alongside her photographic work, Laila works as an art director, building the world around an image through set, styling and textiles. Across commissioned and self-initiated projects, her images shift between documentary closeness and scenes she stages herself.
Laila often works closely with artists, writers and performers, recently with writer and photographer Phaedra Haringsma and performance artist and actress Khadija El Kharraz Alami.
She graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2013, after interning with Annie Leibovitz and Ryan McGinley in New York. Her work has been shown at Hama Gallery and Pleintheater Amsterdam, and has appeared in publications and platforms including OneWorld, De Correspondent, Atlas Aesthetics, Atay Atelier and Nataal.
Commissions and print inquiries available upon request info@lailacohen.com