Nadia Lee Cohen’s new pictures mission revisits reminiscence, delusion, and the American midwest

In her most private work up to now, photographer and filmmaker Nadia Lee Cohen returns to the American Midwest to unveil Holy Ohio, a deeply intimate pictures mission formed by reminiscence, household ties, and the surreal stillness of a spot the place time seems suspended.

A brand new Nadia Lee Cohen e-book rooted in reminiscence

Released on December twelfth, 2025, Holy Ohio marks the newest Nadia Lee Cohen e-book, created in collaboration with WePresent and revealed by IDEA. The mission was born from Cohen’s summer time 2025 journey again to Ohio—the primary since her childhood go to in 1999. What started as a household journey developed into a young visible exploration: a return to her mom’s aspect of the household, 4 generations residing collectively on the identical quiet cul-de-sac, and a home the place nearly nothing has modified in 26 years.

Cohen mentioned that returning felt uncanny, as if the carpets, ornaments, ephemera and hum of a number of televisions had remained untouched since her youth. This ambiance, which was concurrently heat, chaotic and glued in time, grew to become the emotional core of the e-book.

Inside the pictures mission: a research of time, place, and unvarnished actuality

Unlike her earlier extremely stylised and cinematic works, this pictures mission trades fantasy for candor. Cohen approached Ohio with minimal staging, opting as an alternative to doc the textures of household life: the litter of acquainted rooms, the rhythms of each day noise, the intimacy of reunion, and the delicate tensions beneath all of it.

Echoing all through the photographs are fragmented childhood impressions of fireflies, vivid packaging, loud cartoons, and the sensory overload of her first ‘real’ American expertise. 

Visual language of the newest Nadia Lee Cohen e-book

Holy Ohio retains Cohen’s unmistakable eye, but its visible language is extra restrained than her ordinary technicolor surrealism. The e-book is crafted to resemble a Bible, with a white recycled leather-based cowl and punctiliously chosen archival papers that add weight and sacredness to the expertise. Inside, the pictures mix delicate naturalism together with her signature sense of atmospheric rigidity—quiet portraits, unguarded gestures, objects frozen of their unique locations for many years.

Discover our interview with Nadia Lee Cohen, a storyteller who bends time, area, and aesthetics with easy boldness. Inside, she delves into the principles she needs she had for the previous, the boundaries that form her work, and her unapologetically sharp tackle society.

NADIA LEE COHEN

Holy Ohio, 2025

Courtesy of  NADIA LEE COHEN