Hidden for decades, a photographer’s tribute to her idols opens at Magnes

By Niva Ashkenazi for J. The Jewish News of Northern California

For 25 years, Nancy Lee Katz worked on a secret project. The New York photographer sent hundreds of personal letters to cultural figures she admired: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, painter Roy Lichtenstein and author Elie Wiesel. 

The letters included a simple request: Give me an hour to photograph you. 

She sought no payment or fame, only a chance to pay homage to her heroes. Katz chose not to publish them, and the images sat in boxes in her bedroom until 2019, a year after her death at age 70. 

Her full collection of 133 photographs is on view for the first time at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley as “Nancy Lee Katz: A Private Pantheon.”