Gail Skoff is a native Californian who has been photographing since her teens. Her early work included black and white landscape photographs from Bali, the American Southwest, and Hawaii, that she hand-colored with oil paints. This mix of photography and painting was a technique Skoff used for almost 30 years.

In 1981 Skoff began to travel extensively through the French wine country with her husband, wine merchant Kermit Lynch, and continues to do so with her son, Anthony. This unique access into French and Italian wine culture allowed her to document the winemakers' lives and the traditional way certain wines are still being produced.

Skoff has created handmade artists' books in small editions, and has collaborated on wine books with her husband, and cookbooks with Alice Waters, Paul Bertolli and Richard Olney.

Skoff received an MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute in 1979 and was the recipient of an NEA grant in 1976. Her work is included in many collections both nationally and internationally, including The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.

She continues to teach and splits her time between homes in Berkeley, California and Le Beausset in Provence, France.