Factory Photog Nat Finkelstein Dead at 76

(Photo by Nat Finkelstein)

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If you've ever seen Warhol's Factory, it was likely in part through the lens of Nat Finkelstein, who documented much of that era and the characters who created it. The photographer died of pneumonia and emphysema on October 2nd at the age of 76, while at his home in Shandaken, New York. The NY Times notes that he was the house photographer at the Factory from 1964 to 1967, and "created spontaneous portraits not only of Factory regulars like Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga but also of the artists and celebrities who drifted in and out of the Warhol orbit."

Finkelstein was a New York local from day one, born in Brooklyn in 1933, growing up on Coney Island and attending Stuyvesant High School and Brooklyn College. During his years of photography assignments, he found his niche in chronicling subcultures in the U.S., which of course led him to Warhol. Later in life he became involved with the Black Panthers, had a warrant out for his arrest in a drug case, fled the country believing the government was trying to assassinate him, returned addicted to cocaine and got married five and divorced four times. On the upside, he cleaned himself up in the 90s and got back in to his original love of photography.