is a visual artist who grew up in Ithaca, New York and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds a B.S. from Ithaca College, and received her M.F.A. from Syracuse University in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Her photographs have been commissioned by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar and more. Nydia uses photography, collage, video, and books to address matters of sexuality, intimacy, and her lived experience as a girl, woman, and mother. She delicately weaves stories concerning circumstance, value, and power and uses her work to create a physical and allegorical space presented through a Black feminine lens. The result is an environment that is dependent upon the belief that in order to maintain resiliency, a magical outlook is necessary. In this space, props function as extensions of the body, costumes as markers of identity, and gestures/actions reveal the performance, celebration, discovery and confrontation involved in reclaiming one's body for their own exploration, discovery, and understanding. She has completed artist residencies at Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. Her work has been featured in the book Mfon: A Journal of Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, The Huffington Post, The NYTimes Style Magazine, Aperture Foundation, Time, Refinery 29, Frames Magazine, and more. Nydia is recognized for her body of work entitled, The Girls Who Spun Gold, which is a collection of images that resulted from a Girl Empowerment Group that Blas founded after observing a lack of space and community for teen girls of African descent in Ithaca, New York. In 2019, she was named “One to Watch” by the British Journal of Photography. She was one of twelve participants for The World Press Photo Foundation’s 26th edition of the 2019 Joop Swart Masterclass. In 2020 she was named on the Lit List and in 2021, The Silver List.