Artist: Nat Finkelstein, nicknamed “Nat the Hat

The photographer Nat Finkelstein, nicknamed “Nat the Hat”, was best known for his memorable chronicling of Andy Warhol’s Factory.
“I stayed at the Factory from 1964 till 1967,” Finkelstein told an interviewer in 2001. Then later, “I watched pop die and punk being born.”

His photographs of Warhol and his exotic acolytes are almost as recognisable as the artist’s own works. They include celebrated shots of Warhol with Bob Dylan, of Edie Sedgwick chewing her necklace, of the Velvet Underground with the German model Nico, and more.

Nathaniel Finkelstein was born in Coney Island in 1933; his father was a New York cab driver. He graduated from the respected Stuyvesant High School, Brooklyn, in 1950. He had artistic aspirations but, being entirely unable to draw, was uncertain how to achieve them. Then, in 1952, he bought a camera and enrolled at the Brooklyn College to study photography. There, inspired by such great photographers as Edward Steichen, Finkelstein found his métier behind the lens. He also developed his militant political tendencies, to the extent that he was expelled during his final term after hurling a filing cabinet through a window while protesting at the college’s censorship of a racy college rag.

All was not lost. Another of his tutors, the Russian émigré art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch (who famously brought Cocteau, Chagall and Man Ray to illustrate the magazine), had taken a shine to the feisty Borough boy and gave him a placement assisting on fashion shoots. Eventually Finkelstein developed this into regular assignments as a photojournalist on Sports Illustrated. There he specialised in photographing the mundane — bridge tournaments, chess matches and dog shows — because, he said: “I was the only one who could make them visually compelling.”

By his early twenties Finkelstein was well on the way to establishing himself as a bona fide photographer. He was signed up by the PIX and Black Star agencies (the latter supplied Life magazine with much imagery) through which he met his idol, the war photojournalist Robert Capa, and he spent time with such famous photographers as Eugene Smith and Andreas Feininger.

Finkelstein also capitalised on his knack for being at the right place at the right time, specialising in spotting and recording the rich and varied subcultures of New York City, in particular the burgeoning Harlem jazz and soul scenes.

“I used to sell Ella Fitzgerald and Errol Garner weed,” he told an interviewer. “That was like a golden passport into that world.”

In September 1962 Finkelstein got the break that would define his future. He was commissioned by Pageant magazine to do one of the first articles on Pop Art, entitled “What happens at a Happening?”. He found himself documenting a Claes Oldenburg “happening” in Greenwich Village.

Two years later Finkelstein was at a party at Warhol’s Factory and met the artist along with his crowd of beautiful malcontents. He was unable to tear himself away, and he spent the next three years photographing all and sundry. He took the first photographs of the Velvet Underground (whom he nicknamed “the Psychopath’s Rolling Stones”); he shot Warhol with Marcel Duchamp; Salvador Dalí and Allen Ginsberg introduced him to Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who shot and wounded Warhol with a handgun in 1968.

The relationship with the Factory suited both parties — Warhol enjoyed having a photographer to record his every nuance, and for Finkelstein there was no shortage of memorable subjects for his camera.

While diving in and out of the Factory, Finkelstein was also busy with other matters. A staunch political activist, he helped to co-ordinate civil rights rallies and anti-war demonstrations. This activity brought him into an association with the Black Panthers, for whom, according to his widow, Elizabeth, “he organised, trained and sourced munitions”.

As a consequence, in 1969 a judge issued a federal warrant for the arrest of Finkelstein in connection with an old drugs charge. Fearing for his life, he claimed, he fled the US and lived as a fugitive for the next dozen years. For some time he followed the hippy trail through the Middle East, selling hashish to make ends meet.

Eventually, the charges against him were dropped, and in 1982 Finkelstein returned to the US and its booming counterculture. He became involved in the New York punk music scene, briefly managing bands such as Khmer Rouge, and developed an addiction to cocaine, which prompted frequent visits to Bolivia to supply his needs more conveniently.

It took the death of Warhol in 1987 to persuade Finkelstein that he needed to claw himself back from the brink of over-excess. He pulled himself together, dusted down his negatives and published his second book, Andy Warhol: The Factory Years, 1964-1967. An exhibition at the V&A followed and prompted him, at the age of 56, to pick up his camera in earnest.

He moved first to London — where, in baseball cap, bomber jacket and sneakers, he was a constant presence on the rave scene — then to Amsterdam and back to New York, where he shot a generation of New York club kids for his book Merry Monsters (1993). Finkelstein now found himself in demand, travelling and exhibiting his work worldwide. He had more than 75 solo and group shows at museums and galleries, including Tate Modern, the V&A, the Whitney and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. His photographs appeared in such magazines as Life, Time, Sports Illustrated, Harper’s & Queen, Vogue, The New York Times Magazine and the British broadsheets.

There is a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Idea Generation Gallery, London, from December, and his work will also feature in the exhibition Who Shot Rock at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, from the end of this month.

In his last years Finkelstein moved from his beloved Brooklyn to Shandaken in upstate New York to finish writing his memoirs, entitled The 14 Ounce Pound.

Finkelstein was married five times. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth.

Nat Finkelstein, photographer, was born on January 17, 1933. He died from complications of pneumonia and emphysema on October 2, 2009, aged 76

From Times Online October 17, 2009