Nancy Lee Katz

Nancy Lee Katz (1947-2018) grew up in Westchester County, New York, the daughter of film editor Sidney Katz. As a young woman she worked as an assistant film editor and still photographer for films. Later, over the course of 25 years, mainly in the 1980s and 1990s, Katz photographed nearly 200 leading figures in the worlds of visual art and music. She called her large body of photographs her ‘pantheon’. These portraits were not commissioned, she simply photographed subjects who fascinated her for the brilliance of their art, musical composition or performances. The photographs were never intended for sale or distribution and were not exhibited in her lifetime. Apart from the prints that she presented to her subjects, she gave away only two prints in her lifetime: one to her framer and one to her brother-in-law. She generally did not know her sitters, she simply admired their art and vision and wished to record their likeness. Malcolm Daniel, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, wrote: ‘Katz was an extremely private person, unknown to virtually all her subjects before approaching them with the proposal for a portrait sitting … it’s a mystery how, as a ‘cold caller’ unaided by mutual contacts or reputation, she succeeded in convincing her subjects to agree to a portrait session in the first place.’ (https://www.mfah.org/collection/nancy-lee-katz)