Susan Mikula: The Polaroid Photographer and Rachel Maddow’s Partner

Susan Mikula is an American fine art photographer known for dreamy, softly blurred pictures made with vintage Polaroid cameras and expired instant film. She’s also the longtime partner of TV host Rachel Maddow; the two have been together since 1999. Her work has been shown in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, and across Massachusetts.

Mikula is a working artist with more than 25 years of solo shows behind her. She splits her time between New York City and rural Western Massachusetts. You can read more stories about famous people on GrandPeoples.com.

Who is Susan Mikula?

Mikula is a photographer first. She makes fine art prints, not news or portrait photos for hire. Her pictures show subjects such as carnivals, landscapes, borders, houses, demolition derbies, and light itself.

She’s mostly self-taught. She studied color theory at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and then worked for years as an accountant while she entered group and juried shows. Her first solo exhibition came in 1998.

That background in numbers shows up in her pictures. Her frames are carefully planned, even when the image itself looks loose and hazy.

How does Susan Mikula take her photos?

Her method is simple to describe and hard to copy. She shoots only on instant film, using a collection of old Polaroid cameras. Much of that film is past its expiration date.

Expired film doesn’t behave in a normal way. Colors shift, edges soften, and each shot can come out differently. Mikula treats that surprise as part of the work.

She also follows a few strict rules:

• Available light only. She works with the light that’s already there.
• No cropping or editing. Each image stays the way the camera made it.
• Long exposures. She often holds the shutter open, which gives scenes a blurred, film-like feel.
• Camera matched to the project. She studies how each old camera behaves before choosing one.
• Scanned and enlarged. The small original print is scanned so it can be shown at a larger size.

She has used pinhole cameras too. One piece in her bearings series was made with a pinhole camera on a rare Polaroid film called Chocolate.

What does her work show?

Mikula returns to the same simple subjects again and again. She calls them archetypes, and they include hallways, windows, clapboard walls, and trucks.

Her best-known series looked at American industry. American Device (2010) showed ports and refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast and the Port of Long Beach in California. American Bond (2011) pictured abandoned industrial sites from Texas to Massachusetts. She has described those pictures plainly: “These photographs are neither damning, nor exultant,” and “They are just who we are.” She has also called the look she chased in that industrial work a “brutalist beauty.”

Later series turned more personal. u.X (2013) drew on the Lascaux cave paintings and on toys she played with as a child with her sister. Many newer works take their titles from lines by poets such as Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver.

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Where has Susan Mikula’s work been shown?

She has held solo shows almost every year or two since 1998. Today she’s represented by Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown and by William Baczek Fine Arts in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Her work also hangs in the permanent collection of the U.S. diplomatic post in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. It got there through Art in Embassies, a U.S. State Department program that places American art in offices abroad. She made site-specific work for that project starting in 2017.

Has she published any books?

Yes. Mikula has released several photo books tied to her shows:

• Susan Mikula: Photographs (2008)
• Susan Mikula: American Bond (2011)
• Susan Mikula: u.X (2013)
• Susan Mikula: Kilo (2017)

How did Susan Mikula meet Rachel Maddow?

They met in Western Massachusetts in 1999. Maddow was working on her doctoral thesis at the time and taking odd jobs to get by. Mikula hired her to do yard work, and they started dating soon after.

They’ve been together ever since. In a 2010 interview with The Advocate, Mikula said Maddow is “really supportive of my work.” Maddow attended Mikula’s 2009 opening at the TJ Walton Gallery in Provincetown.

Conclusion

Susan Mikula is an American photographer who makes soft, dreamlike images with vintage Polaroid cameras and expired instant film. She uses only available light, never crops or edits, and has held solo shows since 1998, from Northampton to San Francisco and Provincetown. She’s represented by Rice Polak Gallery and William Baczek Fine Arts. She’s also Rachel Maddow’s partner, and the two have been together since meeting in 1999. More biographies of famous people are available on GrandPeoples.com.

Frequently asked questions

What does Susan Mikula do for a living?

Susan Mikula is a fine art photographer. She makes prints using vintage Polaroid cameras and instant film, often expired, and shows them in galleries. Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown and William Baczek Fine Arts in Northampton represent her work.

How long have Susan Mikula and Rachel Maddow been together?

Susan Mikula and Rachel Maddow have been together since 1999. They met in Western Massachusetts while Maddow was working on her doctoral thesis, after Mikula hired her for yard work. That makes about 27 years as of 2026.

What kind of camera does Susan Mikula use?

Susan Mikula uses vintage Polaroid cameras and instant film, much of it past its expiration date. She has also used pinhole cameras. She picks each camera for its quirks and shoots only with available light.

Where does Susan Mikula live?

Susan Mikula lives in New York City and in rural Western Massachusetts. Much of her art career has centered on Massachusetts, with shows in Northampton, Pittsfield, Boston, and Provincetown, along with galleries in New York and California.

When was Susan Mikula’s first exhibition?

Susan Mikula had her first solo exhibition in 1998. The show, called Lux in Tenebris, was held at the Northampton Center for the Arts in Northampton, Massachusetts. Before that, she showed work in group and juried exhibitions.