Learn about Nina Leen, one of the many photographers for LIFE who captured some of the most iconic pictures from the US & around the World.

With her first camera, a Rolleiflex, she honed her photography skills, teaching herself how to take pictures and developing what would become her signature style by creating at-once intimate and stylized portraits of animals at New York’s Bronx Zoo.

Nov 18, 2012 · With her first camera, a Rolleiflex, she honed her photography skills, teaching herself how to take pictures — and developing what would become her signature style — by creating at-once intimate...

May 10, 2016 · Despite the mystery surrounding her, Leen produced some memorable work, including an ongoing series featuring her adopted stray dog, Lucky, and a photo that was picked by Carl Sagan to fly aboard the Voyager space probe.

Her fashion images have a crisp, linear quality while her photographs of American culture are relaxed and without artifice. Leen published fifteen books of her photography, including: Images of Sound ; Women, Heroes and a Frog ; Love, Sunrise and Elevated Apes ; and The World of Bats .

Leen died on January 1, 1995 at her home in New York City. A spokesperson for LIFE said that she was in her late 70s or early 80s, but we’ll never know for sure. Check out more of Leen's...

Mar 15, 2015 · There isn’t a lot that we know about Nina Leen, a Life magazine staff photographer from 1945 until the magazine switched from a weekly publication to a monthly one in 1972, and whose images...

Mar 5, 2015 · One set of images have gone viral of one of Nina Leen’s very first photo shoots of a group from the Young Women’s Republican Club of Milford, Conn, who got together in 1941 for an old-fashioned “smoker”, ( normally a men only event ) for one long, memorable night in southern New England.

Explore Nina Leen within the LIFE photography vault, one of the most prestigious & privately held archives from the US & around the World.