Dana Lixenberg was born in Amsterdam and studied at the London College of Printing and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. She is known for her understated, intimate portraits, often of underserved communities. Her work is characterized by compositional rigor and the absence of social stereotyping. She uses a large-format camera, which necessitates what she calls a “slow dance” between her and her subjects. Lixenberg’s most extensive project to date is Imperial Courts, 1993-2015, which began in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King riots and which documents life in a federal housing project in Watts, Los Angeles over 22 years. Other large-scale projects include Jeffersonville, Indiana (2005), a collection of landscapes and portraits of a small town’s homeless population, and The Last Days of Shishmaref (2008), from which a selection is presented in COAL + ICE. In her editorial work, Lixenberg has also photographed many cultural icons in the United States including Tupac Shakur, Toni Morrison, and Noam Chomsky.