Jacquie Maria Wessels was born in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, and presently lives and works in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in photography in 1990, and studied social psychology (BA) at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam. Wessels has developed into an autonomous/documentary photographer who prefers to delve deeply into a subject over a long period.

The work of Wessels has been exhibited at various locations in the Netherlands and abroad at amongst others: Surinaams Museum in Paramaribo Surinam, Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen (NL), Museum IJsselstein (NL), Museum of Photography Thessaloniki (GR), PhotoBiennale Greece (GR), Noorderlicht Photo Festival Groningen (NL),
New York Photo Festival (US), Gallery Carte Blanche San Francisco (US), Naarden Photo Festival (NL), Corcoran Gallery Washington (US), Galerie Baudelaire Antwerp (BE), Municipal Museum Arnhem (NL), Amsterdam Municipal Archive (NL), the Historical Museum in Amsterdam (NL)

Wessels has received commissions from the Amsterdam Fund for Art, the Province of North Holland, the Photography Foundation in Utrecht (SFU), Municipal Archives of Amsterdam and others.