Maria Fynsk Norup is a photographer whose self-portrait-based work explores the body's entanglement with nature, memory, and illness.,She studied History of Art at the University of Aarhus, earned an M.Sc. in Botany there and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, between 1996 and 2004, and undertook PhD studies at the Copenhagen Botanical Gardens from 2005 to 2009.
In her 2020–2021 series Dryads – The Tree-Bound, drawing on Greek dryad myths and Ovid's Metamorphoses, the human body dissolves into forest textures, treating transformation as an ongoing condition rather than a single event. The series received an honourable mention in the Professional Fine Art category of the 17th Julia Margaret Cameron Award.After being diagnosed with breast cancer on 3 June 2024, she began the self-portrait documentary series 1 in 8, named for the roughly one in eight Danish women diagnosed with the disease each year. She has said the project let her process the experience, including the feeling of losing her sense of self and her femininity, and hopes it raises awareness of the disease.
The series was shown in 2025 as part of “Documentarian 1: Emerging Voices in Documentary Photography”, a Copenhagen Photo Festival group show at Dark Gallery curated by Luke Adekoya Campbell.In 2025 her work also appeared in “Bodyscapes”, a group exhibition curated by Anna Leven at Load Gallery in Barcelonaand, later that year, at Load Editions' inaugural Miami space, which framed the body as terrain shaped by memory, emotion, and its relation to nature.During a month-long residency in Bali in November 2025, she created The Land of Hyangs, three self-portraits made on volcanic shores, in forests, and along riverbeds, engaging with the Balinese concept of hyang, an unseen sacred presence tied to place.In 2026 her work was shortlisted in the Sony World Photography Awards Professional Competition and exhibited at Somerset House in London.
