Dong Lin was born and raised in Beijing, China. In 1990, after photographing the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, he moved to San Francisco, California, to study photography, and was soon employed as a senior photographer for the California Academy of Sciences, the natural history museum in San Francisco.

Between 1998 and 2007, he accompanied Academy scientists on twenty-four international expeditions, primarily photographing wildlife. Meanwhile, from 1999 to 2004, he was a visiting scholar in the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley. In 1997, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

His photographs have appeared in books, journals and magazines as well as in natural history museum exhibitions. He owns books include One American Reality (1996) about the street people in San Francisco and New York City, and People’s Desire (2010) documenting the daily life of Burmese.

He was awarded the 2021 Abigail Cohen Fellowship, through a grant from Magnum Foundation and China File magazine, published by the Asia Society.

Dong lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.