Jennifer Dickson, printmaker, photographer, lecturer, and teacher, was born in Piet Retief, the Republic of South Africa, on September 17, 1936. She studied at Goldsmith’s College School of Art (University of London, England) where she trained as a painter and printmaker from 1954 to 1959. A scholarship awarded by the French government allowed Dickson to travel to Paris and, between 1960 and 1965, she was an associate of the graphic workshop, Atelier 17, working with Stanley William Hayter. She went on to found and direct the graduate printmaking program at Brighton College of Art (now Brighton University, England), and in 1969 she emigrated to Canada where she taught at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts (now the Segal Centre for Performing Arts) in Montreal. In 1974, Dickson became a Canadian citizen and currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She has worked primarily in photography since moving to Canada.

Dickson has had more than sixty solo exhibitions in six countries and has participated in more than 400 group exhibitions. She has been a guest lecturer in nine universities in the United States and has been invited to speak all across Canada at art schools and universities.

Dickson was awarded the prix des jeunes Artistes pour Gravure by the Paris Biennale in 1963. She was named to the Order of Canada (CM) in 1995, and was awarded an honorary doctorate (LLD) in 1988 by the University of Alberta, Edmonton. She was named a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, England in 1976 and, in 2002, she was given the Victor Tolgesy award for cultural leadership by the Council for the Arts in Ottawa.

Jennifer Dickson is represented in the collections of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the National Gallery of Canada, Royal Academy of Arts, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Musée des beaux-arts Montréal, the Royal Academy of Arts (United Kingdom), and the British Museum.