Posts tagged “Nat Finkelstein”

Nat Finkelstein: Where the Underground Met the Underworld

Posted on October 1, 2013

Edie Sedgwick & Nat Finkelstein © Stephen Shore

A cat like Nat Finkelstein had nine lives before he died in 2009. A photographer, journalist, world traveler, animal smuggler, gun runner, drug dealer, ex-convict, revolutionary, and only God (and Nat) knows what else. Born in 1933 in Coney Island, Finkelstein studied with Alexey Brodovich at Brooklyn College before joining Pix and Black Star agencies before leaving the United States in 1969 to escape the Feds.

Possessed with blessings and curses in equal measure, Nat was drawn to the underground—and the underworld. As his memoirs recollect, “I am an anarchist and believe in the overthrow of Capitalism. I am studied and trained. I know that revolutionary victories are achieved through preparation, organization, stealth, and subterfuge, followed by violence only when victory is assured. I also believe in Lenin’s dictum that the problem with the bourgeois revolutionary is that the bourgeois revolutionary always believes that the STAGE of revolution in which they are participating is The Revolution. This accounts for my antipathy to certain insurrectionists (Hoffman, Ginsberg, et al) of the late 60s and early 70s.”

Never a follower, Nat set his own path, with New York City as his base of operations. His iconoclastic disposition landed him at Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1964 while on assignment from Black Star. With unfettered access to the creation of art, film, and Superstars, his documentation of the earliest years of the Factory reveal a scene that has influenced New York’s downtown identity ever since. The glamour of Hollywood with the grittiness of New York conspired to create Pop Art as a way of life.

In his superb book, Andy Warhol: The Factory Years, 1964-1967, Nat recalled, “Andy Warhol’s greatest work of art was Andy Warhol. Other artists first make their art and then celebrity comes from it. Andy reversed this. For me the Factory was a place of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, for some of the others it was: from ferment comes art.

“Andy’s strategy was organized like an air-raid though radar-protected territory. He would drop these showers of silver foil out of the plane to deflect the radar. Behind this screen of smoke and mirrors, there was Andy at work. That was the real function of the entourage. It was a way to get the attention away from Andy, while he hid behind them, doing his number. The entourage was there to distract the attention, to titillate and amuse the public, while Andy was doing his very serious work. Andy was a very hard-working artist, a working man. He hid this very carefully, creating the myth that his products just kinda appeared. I’m probably one of the very few photographers who actually has pictures of Andy with his hands on a paintbrush and the paintbrush touching the painting. He didn’t want to get paint on his hands. So like any great artist, he had an atelier. He manipulated people to do things for him. It was a very studied casual act, ‘Hey, you do it.’ While he was working, he also had others work for him… Well, what else is a Factory? It was a brilliant scam.”

Older than everyone (except Warhol), Nat was a macho from Brooklyn, the straight guy in a sea of Superstars and Pop Art, with a camera, a sharp tongue, and no time for most men. He called the Velvet Underground, “The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones.” Lou Reed’s response? “The three worst people in the world are Nat Finkelstein and two speed dealers.”

At a time when drugs became part of America’s identity, Nat knew the score, always able to access the counterculture’s inner core. In his memoirs, he recounts, “The C.I.A utilized psychomemetics in the MK-ULTRA Project, a secret experiment in mind control, AKA ‘Brain Washing,’ often on unwitting subjects, several of whom would kill themselves. Time-Life publicized and popularized LSD in a stream of articles and pretty (although bogus) pictures. And then, in 1964, the mainstream media appointed an academic mercenary, ex-West Point, ex-Harvard Professor Timothy Leary as their ‘New World’ poster child. Leary—sponsored, financed and supported by a group of old wealth American industrialists—peddled ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ from a 4,000-acre estate in Millbrook, New York. Buttressed by the intellectual cachet of Aldous Huxley, plus the financial backing of the Mellon family and the CIA, Timothy Leary founded an organization called IFIF (International Foundation for Internal Freedom) and recruited a coterie of academics with a mystical bent, who forgot that after Brave New World came 1984.”

Nat was invited to Millbrook, and the meeting with Leary was less than successful. For even a drug dealer as successful as Finkelstein was leery of the relationship between the government, the media, the figureheads that brought LSD and amphetamines into American popular culture. He eventually retreated to his home in upset New York, where journalist Al Aronowitz (who introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan in 1964) described him as, “Nat Finkelstein, Kokaine King of Woodstock.” Nat reigned supreme for a moment or two, and then, as is the case in the underworld, the cover blew.

In 1969, his lawyer called him to New York and revealed a document from the FBI that stated:

A NOTICE

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HEREBY EMPOWER YOU TO BRING BACK THE BODY
OF
NATHAN LOUIS FINKELSTEIN
CLASSIFIED ARMED AND DANGEROUS
NONSUICIDAL

In fear for his life, Nat Finkelstein left the United States. He traveled the Silk Route in the 1970s, appearing in the most unlikely places, eventually sentenced to four years in prison in France for possession of hashish. Nat’s memoirs revealed, “While in prison, I petitioned the United States government, the CIA, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, under the Freedom of Information Act. Both the FBI and the CIA to this day have refused to release my records. However, the DEA records stated that in 1973, while I was still a fugitive, all charges against me were dismissed upon judicial review by a Judge Hector (Lopez or Gomez), with an extreme castigation of the Federal government for illegal actions against me. However, the government not only did not inform myself, my family, my in-laws, or my attorney that these charges were dropped, but forced me to live the life of a fugitive until 1978. Further, my agencies, my publishers, my family, et cetera, had been informed that if they were to publish any work done by me, prior to this dismissal, that they would be arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive. My voice had been effectively silenced.”

When Nat returned to America in 1982, a free citizen, he inquired to Black Star agency and Life magazine about the whereabouts of his negatives. He notes in his memoirs, “Previously, Howard Chapnick of Black Star had told my ex-wife Jill that a woman purporting to be my wife, with a supposed letter from me, had come to the agency demanding that all my negatives be turned over to her. The only thing remaining of my work, aside from my Warhol series, were four or five prints which were made during various assignments.”

While many photographs remain lost, other come to light. In 1995, a collection of 170 color transparencies from The Factory was discovered to be misfiled under the wrong name at a London photo agency. Among the images are Warhol eating pizza, John Cale dozing off, Nico reading the paper, Edie Sedwick applying lipstick—the intimate moments Nat shared through the years.

His time at The Factory was but a chapter in one of those rare lives that crisscross the world at length, as photographs continue to emerge from the recesses of the earth. Photographs shot on August 8, 1965 at a civil rights protest in Washington D.C. came forth from the archives of Life magazine in 2004. As Nat recalled in an essay for The Blacklisted Journalist, there were members of, “The DuBois Society, CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality), SNCC (Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee). Fresh from voter registration drives in Mississippi, militants from Newark and Harlem were joining up with kids from Y.A.W.F. (Youth Against War and Fascism). White middle class kids and black militants coming together in an uneasy alliance. Together with the various Pacifist societies, as well as the followers of Martin Luther King, who previously had eschewed the anti war movement, they joined to form an Assembly of Unrepresented People, determined to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right of free assembly in order to petition their government and declare the war in Vietnam to be a racist war.”

Then things got ugly. As Nat wrote, “The first people to be accosted and intimidated by the police were the Afro-Americans. During the march, an apparently late Nazi threw some of his own paint, and was also roughed up by the police. However, he was not arrested. At this point, the police forces were led and instructed by a non-uniformed, unidentified man, who apparently commanded the police to be rough. In fact, you can see this man in the pictures. Who he was, no one may ever know. As you can see from the photographs, the other photographers stayed at a short distance from this action, whereas I was fully involved, as you can see one picture, to the point of being punched in the stomach by a policeman during the melee, even though I was wearing official press credentials identifying me as a photographer from Life magazine. I did my job recording the information before me; the brutality, the obvious concentration on people of color, the fingernails crunching nerve endings, the faces squeezed, the glee of the oppressors, the courage of the kids.

“As you’ll notice from these photographs, there were no “long-haired freaks?: no Abbie Hoffman, no Jerry Rubin, no Allen Ginsberg. No pot, no gratuitous violence on the part of the protestors. This came later. It is my firm belief this was done by the so-called capitalist “Free Press.” The mainstream media that appointed theatrical clowns such as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, as representative of the antiwar movement. When actually, the antiwar movement consisted of the students and the ordinary American working class.”

Throughout his years on this earth, Nat was a champion for the underdog, defying the corrupt system through his art, words, and actions. His actions—while not always legal—held to another ethic; that integrity means holding firm in a raging storm. A typhoon like Nat Finkelstein may have left this earth, but his legacy is a life that challenged and ran counter to the hypocrisy of the world.

Originally published in
Le Journal de la Photographie
18 March 2011

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Photography

Nat Finkelstein: Defend Freedom

Posted on March 7, 2013

Nat Finkelstein was a photographer with the photo agencies PIX and Black Star during the 1960s. He was a successful mainstream photojournalist, published in major media outlets. In August 1965, Nat was assigned by Life Magazine to photograph protesters in Washington DC. The protest – known as the Assembly of Unrepresented Persons—was designed to link opposition to the Vietnam War with support for voting rights to create a broader peace and freedom movement. Urged on by a young woman holding a “DEFEND FREEDOM” sign, the protesters tried nonviolently to enter the Capitol to present a “Declaration of Peace.” But police intervened and a melée ensued—with Nat Finkelstein there to capture every frame of it.

After the protest, Nat gave his negatives to a messenger from Life’s Washington office. Those negatives promptly disappeared. For almost 30 years they remained missing and this hole in the historical record persisted. But fortunately, the contact sheets of the images Nat captured that day were recently re-discovered. Below is Nat’s story, as he lived it.

Defend Freedom
Photographs and Story by Nat Finkelstein
First published by The Blacklisted Journalist, 2004

The Free Press is free only to the man who owns the presses. —A.J. Leibling, The Press

Liberty is murdered when the Free Press is Murdoched

It was the eighth of August ’65.

There’s hardly a person still alive who remembers that date and time and year when insurrections were here and the protest was clear: all comparisons stop there.

I was a stringer with two major photographic agencies, Black Star and Pix. I specialized in civil rights, politics, and the counterculture. I was younger then and still believed that it was possible to change the world 35 millimeters at a time. That as a photojournalist working for nationally distributed magazines, I could contribute to change and betterment:

”Show them the light and they will follow” sort of elitism. The Liberal trap: a fallacy.

BULLET: True that Playboy helped bring about certain temporary changes in societal attitudes towards sexuality. But Hugh Hefner never was and never would be a politically progressive publisher. He was never much more than a brilliant huckster of titillations, sex, and lightweight literature: An apostle of materialism and masturbation, the perfect exemplar of capitalism…

LOOK MA! ANYONE CAN DO IT. GET ON THAT RAFT AND COME TO AMERIKA CARLOS AND ROSITA, LOOK WHAT WE GOT AND YOU CAN HAVE IT TOO.

I had a good reputation for handling myself in competitive situations. I had acquitted myself well during Pope John’s visit, Marilyn Monroe’s circus performance, Castro’s visit to the U.N., and the previous Civil Rights demonstrations (as well as fending off sneak attacks of Warhol’s pack of grave-robbers, whiners and sycophants).

Furthermore, I was deeply involved in what was then called “The New Left”—both as a journalist and participant. Long before the onset of “The Struggle,” I had joined the Y.P.A. in the Fifties and had friends and contacts in the movement. I was trusted. So, when Howard Chapnick, the president of Black Star, was asked by Life Magazine to cover an upcoming anti-war demonstration in Washington, he gave the assignment to me. Before I left, Howard warned me of a feud between New York and the DC office. New York, being slightly more liberal of the the two, was less prone to sucking the Luce/Chenault ass. Sabotage was not unheard of—the rivalry was intense.

I arrived at Union Station in Washington the day before the march was scheduled and met up with a group of kids from Columbia University. They were students of Professor Paul Goodman, a well respected, left-leaning political philosopher, and I spent the day with them. I was surprised that they knew who I was and some of the previous articles that I had published. (This was to rebound on me later.)

As the evening progressed, the group became more diverse, as veterans of the civil rights struggle came in: The DuBois Society, CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality), SNCC (Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee). Fresh from voter registration drives in Mississippi, militants from Newark and Harlem were joining up with kids from Y.A.W.F. (Youth Against War and Fascism). White middle class kids and black militants coming together in an uneasy alliance. Together with the various Pacifist societies, as well as the followers of Martin Luther King, who previously had eschewed the anti war movement, they joined to form an Assembly of Unrepresented People, determined to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right of free assembly in order to petition their government and declare the war in Vietnam to be a racist war.

Neither Martin Luther King nor any of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference were present, here preferring to lend their support from a safe distance. They later lent their full support, but at this point in the struggle, the Afro-American section of ‘The Movement’ was represented by SNCC and CORE.

At this point I was encountered by a photographer assigned by Life’s Washington office (I believe Dennis Brock), who informed me that he was there to assist me and that I would get the best shots by climbing to the roof of the Smithsonian Institute, overlooking the parade route and getting an overhead view. This, of course, would take me away from the action and put me on the sidelines. I refused the advice.

Upon leaving the Mall, the march, led by David Dellinger, Stuart Lynde and Robert Moses was attacked by uniformed members of the American Nazi Party. They threw pails of red paint on the leading marchers, of which I was one.

The Nazis were gently led off by the Washington police. I followed, photographing the entire incident.

The Life representative then asked me if I was shooting in color, & I told him that I was shooting in both color & B&W. In that case, he said, you’ve got a cover.

When we reached the House of Representatives, the group was divided by Dellinger and Lynde, the pacifist wing. Those that wished to encounter the government’s forces should sit on the steps, while the pacifists would absent themselves from any physical action and stand on the side.

A short time after this was done, we were refused entry into the House of Representatives. A young Black lady (wearing a “Defend Freedom” sign) with a young white lady stood up and exhorted the crowd to exercise their legal rights and cross the police lines. At this point, I believe the photos speak for themselves. I was busy doing my job.

But you can observe that the first people to be accosted and intimidated by the police were the Afro-Americans. During the march, an apparently late Nazi threw some of his own paint, and was also roughed up by the police. However, he was not arrested.

At this point, the police forces were led and instructed by a non-uniformed, unidentified man, who apparently commanded the police to be rough. In fact, you can see this man in the pictures. Who he was, no one may ever know.

As you can see from the photographs, the other photographers stayed at a short distance from this action, whereas I was fully involved, as you can see one picture, to the point of being punched in the stomach by a policeman during the melee, even though I was wearing official press credentials identifying me as a photographer from Life magazine. I did my job recording the information before me; the brutality, the obvious concentration on people of color, the fingernails crunching nerve endings, the faces squeezed, the glee of the oppressors, the courage of the kids.

At the conclusion, I immediately headed to Union Station to return to New York. While at Union Station, a messenger from Life magazine sought me out, telling me they needed my color shots immediately as they were preparing for a cover. My ego, at that point bigger than my brains—I was thinking about my picture getting on the cover of Life magazine—handed the film to the messenger and returned to New York. Where I received a chewing out from Howard Chapnick, who told me these pictures would be lost forever, which they were. The black and whites—buried—were not retrieved until recently. Time-Life tells me they no longer have the negatives.

(Until recently I fully believed that there was a bureaucratic or interoffice rivalry that resulted in the lose of the story but in July the New York Times frontpaged a similar instance where an early civil rights [1964] story was similarly “lost”: More will appear.)

At that point, I decided to put down my cameras & pick up my militancy. The time for poetry ended, the time for political action began for me. I left for San Francisco soon after, and joined with people such as the Diggers (Emmett Grogan and Peter Cohen (aka Coyote).

As you’ll notice from these photographs, there were no “long-haired freaks”: no Abbie Hoffman, no Jerry Rubin, no Allen Ginsberg. No pot, no gratuitous violence on the part of the protestors. This came later. It is my firm belief this was done by the so-called capitalist “Free Press.” The mainstream media that appointed theatrical clowns such as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, as representative of the antiwar movement. When actually, the antiwar movement consisted of the students and the ordinary American working class. The mainstream press persuaded middle America that William Burroughs was making opiates the religion of their children while their daughters were getting knocked up by commies and Blacks.

The culture war had begun.

www.natfinkelstein.com

Categories: 1960s, Art, Photography

Nat Finkelstein Shot the Velvet Underground

Posted on October 30, 2009

Who Shot Rock & Roll
A Photographic History, 1955–Present

By Gail Buckland

BEHIND THE SCENES WITH

ELIZABETH MURRAY FINKELSTEIN

Nat Finkelstein, American photographer and photojournalist, was born in Brooklyn in 1933. Starting off as a student of the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, Finkelstein worked for agencies like The Black Star and PIX. However Finkelstein is probably best known for his work with Andy Warhol, as his ‘unofficial’ in- house photographer, which is nowadays recognized as some of the best photographic work of the 20th century. Since then, Finkelstein has exhibited his work worldwide; among many other locations, his photographs are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and The Andy Warhol Foundation, New York; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Nat Finkelstein passed away in early October 2009 in his home in Upstate New York. He was 76 years old.

Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein discusses her husband’s work, Velvet Underground and Friends, 1966, selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).

I can imagine you must have mixed emotions, with Nat having recently passed, and the responsibility of running his archive falling to you just as Who Shot Rock & Roll launches. How do you feel about being the spokesperson on behalf of Nat and his work?

Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein: Nat and I had a pact through our marriage: I would protect both his art and his legacy. Because he was significantly older than me—he died at 76, I’m 35—we knew the reality of the situation. I would live to carry on his work, a responsibility I take very seriously.

When I met Nat, he was living in a horrible situation, in a gross apartment under the BQE, depressed and with few prospects for the future. I looked around through this squalid place and there was his artwork. I recognized genius and asked him, “You did all THIS?” And Nat answered, “Yeah, but nobody cares.” He broke my heart. With that, I made it our mission to get his life together and to re-establish him as an ARTIST. I think we did OK.

This project really brings my relationship to Nat full circle, as it was through his work at The Factory in the mid 60s that we first connected. Although neither you nor I were there for it, Nat sure as hell was, and though he is gone, his work continues to live on. Can you describe for us how Nat felt about photographing the Factory and its denizens?

Ironically, perhaps, Nat and Andy Warhol had a common background. Both were children of the Depression, of working class families, who found their voice through their vision. Nat respected Andy – I think Nat knew where Andy was coming from, as an artist and maybe also as a person. Nat was a well-established photojournalist in the 1960s, and Andy knew Nat’s name through photo credits in magazines. When they met, both probably recognized the mutual benefit. I’ve reminded a few haters that it was Andy who wanted Nat at the Factory. And Nat knew a good story when he saw one.

There were qualities of the Factory that Nat really loved: brilliant art, beautiful women, and the Velvet Underground. These are the subjects on which he focused his camera. But he believed the Factory ultimately represented the soft underbelly of the American underground. In 1965, Nat was also photographing, and organizing anti-Vietnam War and civil rights activity—ugly scenes of young and old violently oppressed by the powers that were. In contrast, Nat said that political struggle was of no concern at the silver Factory, where celebrity for its own sake was a common goal. He derisively called the arch-scenesters “the Satellites”—those who existed only to revolve around a bigger star.

Nat described the Velvet Underground as “the psychopath’s Rolling Stones.” Please elaborate…

The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones… Ha! In 1966, Nat used that phrase in his book proposal for the Andy Warhol Index. He was a huge fan of the Rolling Stones, so he wasn’t being derogatory or demeaning—he was being pithy. However, Nat told me that Lou Reed was totally offended when he read this. Obviously, the VU were doing their own thing, but Lou thought the comparison to the Stones diminished their uniqueness. And so, as per Nat, Lou Reed responded, “The three worst people in the world are Nat Finkelstein and two speed dealers.” Touché! Nat claimed Lou never forgave him for the “psychopath” quote. That’s sad, because Nat truly cared for the VU as people, as individuals. He was proud of their accomplishments. But he felt he had been iced out—dismissed or betrayed. In the last years of Nat’s life, Eden Cale, daughter of John, became our very close friend. Nat and John reconnected through Eden, which meant a lot to Nat.

Critic Ian Johnston describes Nat’s photo of the Velvet Underground as “…among the best ever portraits of a rock band, exuding sleaze, menace, and decadent glamour.” What are your thoughts on this image, and how well it has stood the test of time?

Nat has maybe 1,000 photographs of the VU—everything from group shots, to performances, to candid portraits of the individuals. As a photographic study of a rock & roll band—a body of work—it may be unparalleled in scope.

The image in Who Shot Rock & Roll was from a group portrait session; we have a few contact sheets from this shoot, which we referred to as “VU with Vox.” As for the far-reaching influence of these photos, I’m reminded of an email we got several years ago. A VU fan from England, I believe, wrote to ask if Nat had any photographs of the Vox speaker by itself. The fan wanted to know if a legend about the alteration of the Vox knobs was true, and if Nat had photographic evidence. Nat’s response was, “Do you want to buy a photograph?” To which the fan responded, “I just want to know if the story is true.”

I was a fan of the Velvet Underground long before I knew Nat Finkelstein. I didn’t know Nat’s name. I certainly didn’t know he would be my husband—but I knew his pictures. Nat’s photographs are the visual component to the VU story. Despite the arguments and estrangements, Nat and the VU are inextricably linked in history. As long as the Velvet Underground is relevant, which I imagine is forever, Nat’s photographs will remain relevant, too. Great art is timeless.

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Music, Photography

My Man, Nat Finkelstein 1933–2009, May He Rest in Peace

Posted on October 7, 2009

Lemme tell you about my man Nat Finkelstein the kinkiest kid Brooklyn has ever seen. I met him in 2000, he called the office one day to talk with the bosses about his new book for Fall, a Warhol book about the Factory’s earliest days, when the original King of Pop still made his own paintings. Days of desultory decadence that Nat cuts to shreds in his book, The Factory Years, which is now out of print. He signed my book: Heed the cry of the mutant “I need others like me”.

Indeed.

Born in Coney Island, Brooklyn in 1933, Nat Finkelstein was a graduate of Stuyvesant High School and attended Brooklyn College. He blew me away when he dropped this gem on me: homeboy studied photography and design under Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar. What was this crazy BK boy up to anyway ? How did he connect with Warhol ?

Turns out Nat worked as a photojournalist for the PIX and Black Star photo agencies. In 1964, he got an assignment to enter Andy Warhol’s Factory as a journalist. He didn’t leave for three years. Not until he left his mark, with the first photos of the Velvet Underground, who he called “The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones,” then with shots of Edie Sedgwick, and then finally for being the dude who introduced Valerie Solanis to Andy Warhol. A big mark indeed.

Finkelstein abruptly retired from photography in 1969, when a federal warrant was issued for his arrest, due to the incendiary nature of his civil rights activity. He left the United States, and lived as a fugitive for fifteen years, following the Silk Road through the Middle East. I’ve read some of the stories: Morocco in the late 60s, Kandahar in 71; the sort of things you’d never believe, except Nat had proof. He had his photos.

Eventually, all charges against Finkelstein were dismissed, and he returned to New York City in 1982, resuming his photographic career in galleries worldwide. While best known for his images of Warhol’s Factory, Finkelstein’s documented stories as wide ranging as civil rights protests for Life Magazine in the 1960s to the “club kid” scene of the 1990s. His monographs include The Andy Warhol Index (with Warhol, 1968), Girlfriends (1991), Merry Monsters (1993), Andy Warhol: The Factory Years (2000) and Edie Factory Girl (2006).

Flickr

Finkelstein’s photographs are in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Smithsonian Institute, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, among many other public and private collections. His work can be seen in upcoming exhibitions, including “Who Shot Rock” at the Brooklyn Museum this Fall, and a retrospective at Idea Generation, London in December 2009.

Nat Finkelstein passed peacefully at his home in Upstate New York on Friday October 2, 2009. He was 76. Rest in Peace, Nat. You were a true original. A rebel and a renegade, an artist and a ladies man, a brilliant thinker, a crazed Tasmanian devil, and one of the funniest, most on-point people I have ever had the pleasure to know. And I am so glad you had the good sense to marry Elizabeth, as she will carry the torch and torch the flag. Whatever it takes to make things happen.

Artnet

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Photography