Photographer Coliena Rentmeester divides her time between Los Angeles and New York City, shooting fashion, beauty, portraiture, and travel.
After graduating from UCLA summa cum laude with a double major in history and art history, she assisted a commercial director at Propaganda films and shot stills for feature films, commercials, and music videos. In 1998, she earned a scholarship to Art Center College of Design (Los Angeles) where her father Co Rentmeester, a former staff Life Magazine photographer, also studied. While in school she started shooting for several Conde Nast magazines as well as Nylon and Flaunt and developed a feminine spontaneous style. She also briefly interned at Irving Penn’s studio.
Her pictures have appeared in Vanity Fair, W, The New York Times Magazine, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and GQ. Her advertising clients include Bergdorf Goodman, Beautycounter, 1st Dibs, Fossil, J.Crew, Gap, Bonobos, and Amazon, among many others. Some of the celebrities she has photographed include Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Dakota Johnson, Kate Hudson, Owen Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Warren Zevon’s last portrait for the New York Times Magazine.
Rentmeester, a native New Yorker, loves her job: “It’s a creative way to learn more about culture, history, and people,” she says, “I feel like I’ve never left school.”