Cherine Fahd is one of Australia’s leading photographic artists. For almost thirty years, she has worked with photography and, more recently, video performance and writing, exploring how images shape our relationships with others. Her projects involve members of the public alongside her family, friends and community, using portraiture to create intimate social encounters.

Her recent commissions include The Captains (2026), the inaugural Harvey Norman Art Commission presented with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Featuring twelve NRLW captains and leaders, the series considers the women shaping rugby league and its future. Being Together: Parramatta Yearbook was jointly commissioned by C3West on behalf of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in partnership with Parramatta Artists’ Studios, an initiative of the City of Parramatta.

Cherine’s collaborative projects extend photography’s role in social change. CLOAK: Queer Science, Fashion & Photography brings together researchers across disciplines to champion LGBTQIA+ visibility in STEMM. Her participatory portrait project Photo Day, developed with the Hunt-Simes Institute in Sexuality Studies (HISS), explores how photographing together can build queer belonging.

Other projects have been commissioned by the Sydney Opera House, Carriageworks, Performance Space and Monash Gallery of Art. Her work has been exhibited and collected by institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Haifa Museum of Art, Benaki Museum, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

Writing is central to Cherine’s practice. Her essays connect the experience of making photographs with questions of memory, archives and grief, examining how we come to know one another. Her forthcoming book, Photographing, will be published by Duke University Press in 2027. She is also co-authoring, with Daniel Palmer, Powerhouse’s inaugural photography book, commissioned by the museum and exploring photographs in its collection.

Cherine is the author of four photography books. These include three published by M.33 in Melbourne, A Portrait is a Puzzle (2017), Apókryphos (2019), which won the Australia New Zealand Photobook Award, and A Story (2021), alongside One Object After Another, published by Brown Paper for Kandos Museum.

Her essays and reviews appear in the Sydney Review of Books and The Conversation, and her writing has appeared in Fairfax publications, ABC News and SBS. Her scholarly work is published in photographies, Photography & Culture, Journal of Visual Art Practice, Philosophy of Photography, LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal and Fashion Highlight. With Sara Oscar, she co-edited the 2026 special issue of photographies, ‘Photography and Memory in the Age of AI’. She is currently working on a special issue of the International Journal of Fashion Studies.

Since 2026, Cherine has been studying a Master of Psychotherapy and Counselling and practising as a therapist through supervised clinical placements. This work extends her longstanding interest in the relationship between photographer and subject and its parallels with that of therapist and client, particularly the trust and intimacy involved in being seen by another person. Across photography and therapy, she attends to the trust that develops between people and the experience of being seen and heard.

Cherine has received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW. Her awards include the NSW Women & Arts Fellowship, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award and the National Photography Prize. She has undertaken residencies at the Moya Dyring Studio in Paris, through Asialink in Varanasi, India, and at The Clothing Store, Carriageworks.