Age, Biography and Wiki

Sy Kattelson was born on 11 February, 1923 in United States, is an American photographer. Discover Sy Kattelson's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is he in this year and how he spends money? Also learn how he earned most of networth at the age of 95 years old?

Popular As N/A
Occupation N/A
Age 95 years old
Zodiac Sign Aquarius
Born 11 February 1923
Birthday 11 February
Birthplace N/A
Date of death 24 November, 2018
Died Place N/A
Nationality United States

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 11 February. He is a member of famous photographer with the age 95 years old group.

Sy Kattelson Height, Weight & Measurements

At 95 years old, Sy Kattelson height not available right now. We will update Sy Kattelson's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible.

Physical Status
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Dating & Relationship status

He is currently single. He is not dating anyone. We don't have much information about He's past relationship and any previous engaged. According to our Database, He has no children.

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Sy Kattelson Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2023-2024. So, how much is Sy Kattelson worth at the age of 95 years old? Sy Kattelson’s income source is mostly from being a successful photographer. He is from United States. We have estimated Sy Kattelson's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.

Net Worth in 2024 $1 Million - $5 Million
Salary in 2024 Under Review
Net Worth in 2023 Pending
Salary in 2023 Under Review
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Cars Not Available
Source of Income photographer

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Timeline

1923

Seymour Kattelson (February 11, 1923 – November 24, 2018), better known as Sy Kattelson, was an American photographer whose earliest work documents working class New Yorkers during the years immediately following World War II.

Kattelson was born in 1923 in the Bronx, New York to a middle class Jewish family.

His mother owned a lingerie shop and his father was an electrician and fabricator of neon signs.

His paternal grandfather was a vaudeville musician whose lifestyle influenced Kattelson's decision to become an artist.

Until he was 7 years old they lived on Mount Eden area of the Grand Concourse and then moved to a house in Laurelton, Queens.

1936

In 1936 they lost the family store and returned to the Bronx, eventually settling in what was then the working-class neighborhood of Manhattan's Washington Heights.

He attended Stuyvesant High School, intending on becoming an aeronautical engineer, but abandoned this direction on learning that there were few jobs being given to Jews at the time in engineering.

1942

Rather than wait to be drafted, in 1942 he volunteered for the Air Corps as a corporal aerial cartographer, developing film taken from aircraft to assess the success of their bombing runs.

At the war's end he was redeployed to France where he worked as an army publicity photographer.

Upon his return to the United States, Kattelson joined the Photo League and studied under Sid Grossman and Paul Strand and later was enrolled in the Hans Hofmann School of Art.

1943

It was while working as a delivery boy for the Aremac Camera store on 43rd street that he first became aware of the possibility of working professionally as a photographer.

A German refugee couple who were the owners of a studio to which he was making a delivery on sensing his interest in their work encouraged him to pursue photography.

"They told me I should do something interesting with my life - like photography".

He later worked in the dark room at Stone-Wright Studio and then became the assistant to one of their in-house photographers.

This was followed by his becoming the photographer at Lawrence Studios- where he photographed scenes staged by illustrators who would then use his work as the basis for their illustrations in magazines such as True Story, Cosmopolitan and Romance.

1947

He was an early practitioner of street photography and was associated with the Photo League from 1947 until its closing in 1951.

His portraits, frequently taken without his subjects' awareness while traveling through the streets or riding the city's subways, convey the dignity of their lives as lived in public places.

The depth of his photographs often comes from the tension between the grittiness of their urban settings and the contemplative sense of his subjects' as being lost within themselves.

1948

His work was represented in the original 'This is the Photo League' exhibit of 1948 and the 'New Workers' exhibit of 1949.

1949

He taught the Basic Technique and Advanced Technique classes in 1949 and 1950 respectively.

1951

He served as an executive member and teacher at the Photo League until it disbanded in 1951 during the Red Scare after being declared "subversive" and a front for the Communist Party.

The League, while not directly allied with the Communist Party, was originally named the Workers Film and Photo League and had its origins in Europe as the "Workers as Photographers" movement and counted among its members many that were socially and politically progressive.

As Kattelson stated, "We were trying to do the sort of photography that put real people in the pictures. Somehow, that was considered radical."

The group's political leanings were never his concern.

1953

From 1953 to 1955 Kattelson worked as a fashion photographer for Glamour and for Fashion and Travel where his experience in street photography led him to be one of the first to use a 35mm camera to photograph models in outdoor urban settings.

The social concerns of the Photo League influenced his relationship to fashion photography.

“We were photojournalists.

If I did a fashion spread for a magazine and I happened to catch some black people in the background of a picture, they would blot that out before the magazine was released.

I suppose the idea was to make believe blacks didn't exist and we, the people in the League, really believed in what we were doing.

Photos really meant something to us.”

1954

In 1954 Kattelson photographed the first Newport Jazz Festival.

1958

In 1958 he became a color darkroom technician and manager at a large commercial color photography lab.

1959

“I was just trying to show the world what it was.” After the disbanding of the League, Kattelson remained close to Grossman and co-edited and printed carbros for Grossman's posthumous 1959 book Journey to the Cape.

1961

In 1961 he moved to Woodstock, NY where he founded the Tinker Street Cinema, at the time one of the few art house cinemas outside a major urban area.

1980

In the 1980s, he returned to photography, producing photographs that continued the themes of his earlier work while capturing the dynamism of urban life through collage and multiple exposures.

1992

He has been represented by the Witkin Gallery and, since 1992, by the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York.

While never purely a formalist, Kattelson's photographs often use the geometry of urban structures or the multiple reflections of storefronts or subway windows to create densely layered settings for his introspective portraits.

His later work makes use of triptychs or multiple exposures to capture the sense of dynamism of urban life.

The people in his photographs, often witnessed in mid gesture, and sometimes in mournful or strained connection to one another, are treated in an unsentimental manner that conveys both their individual character and their anonymity in the larger city.

2018

He died in Rhinebeck, New York in November 2018 at the age of 95.