Nic Nicosia was born in 1951 in Dallas, TX. He received a BS in 1974 in Radio-TV-Film from The University of North Texas with a concentration in motion pictures. He subsequently applied his cinematic mind-set for the making of a still image and is recognized as a pioneer of the staged photographic movement that came into prominence in the early 1980’s.

Following a 1982 solo exhibition at Artists Space in New York, he was included in the 1983 Whitney Biennial, and the Guggenheim’s 1983 Exxon National Exhibition. He has been included in several biennials including Documenta IX in 1992, and a second Whitney Biennial in 2000. In 1999 the Contemporary Arts Museum, in Houston, launched a 20-year retrospective of Nicosia's work; Nic Nicosia, Real Pictures 1979-1999. A 2nd major survey of his work was exhibited at CASA in Salamanca, Spain, in 2003.

Museums that have acquired Nicosia’s work include: The Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Dallas Museum of Art, and The Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Grants and awards include a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant in 1984, Awards in the Visual Arts - AVA 11 in 1991, and The Tesuque Foundation, Artist Fellowship Grant in 1998.

The University of Texas Press produced a major career retrospective, Nic Nicosia, released in October of 2012. The book includes over 160 images and film stills from 1980 through 2011. Nicosia currently lives and works in Dallas, TX.