Cynthia Greig was born in Detroit, Michigan. She studied printmaking at Washington University and attended graduate programs in art history and photography at the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan where she received her MA and MFA in 1988 and 1995 respectively. She is the recipient of several major awards including the Light Work Artist Residency (2001), the Houston Center for Photography Fellowship (2003), the Santa Fe Center for Photography Singular Image Award (2004), and was a runner-up for the 2007 Aperture Prize. In 2015, Greig received a Visual Artist Fellowship from the Kresge Foundation.

Her photographs and videos have been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, George Eastman House and International Museum of Photography and Film, Museum of Fine Art Houston, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Light Work Collection, Smith College Museum of Art, as well as corporate and private collections. Her work has appeared and been reviewed in publications including ARTnews, Art Week, BLINK, Contact Sheet Annual, Diffusion, Los Angeles Times, New Art Examiner, New York Photo Review, Photography Quarterly, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Toronto Star. An avid collector of 19th-century photographs, Greig also co-authored the book, Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls and Other Renegades (2003).

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