Viola Maiwald (*1988 in northern Germany) is a photographer based in Essen and Hamburg, Germany. In 2023, she completed her Bachelor's degree in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. At the same year she started her Master's program in Photography Practice at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. During her B.A. she spent a semester abroad at the Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Due to the social changes caused by the outbreak of the Corona virus, she began her work "gaze up", which deals with the search for explanations for events in life and the question of chance. Coincidence also plays a certain role in her latest project "Between the Layers". It deals with natural gas extraction in Lower Saxony and its impact on the environment. Since then, she has been particularly interested in the materiality of photography and its narrative capacity.