Max Kozloff, 1933 – 2025: In Memoriam

We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of American art historian, critic, writer, and photographer Max Kozloff on April 7, 2025. 

We first worked with Max back in 2001 on an essay for the powerHouse Books re-publishing his Larry Fink’s seminal Social Graces, a riveting book of photography contrasting New York City’s high society set with Larry’s neighbors and townsfolk of rural Pennsylvania. Max’s essay reflected on Larry’s process and technique, set in the context of other photographers of the time. It has been called “the best essay ever written on Fink’s work.”

In 2003, Max personally chose and photo-edited our famed New Yorkers: As Seen By Magnum Photographers, a gallery of eye-catching, untamed images of the metropolis taken by members of the renowned Magnum photo agency. Leafing through New Yorkers is like walking the streets of New York City, beguiled by its implausible and mixed energies, renewed at each turn of a corner. We owe it all to Max.

Over a decade later in 2017, we again got the chance to work together again with SHOT: 101 Survivors of Gun Violence in America by Kathy Shorr. Shot is about people who have suffered gun violence personally and survived the experience. It portrays 101 survivors, aged 8 to 80; they are the representatives of “survivor hood.” Again, Max’s essay grounded and contextualized the photographs.

It wasn’t until 2021 that we finally got the chance to work on a book of photographs by Max himself: A Carnival of Mimics. A street photographer on the lookout for miscellaneous piquancies, Max gradually became aware that commercial effigies and statues, dummies and mannequins had begun to infiltrate his urban subject matter. A Carnival of Mimics is a late-career masterpiece, from one of modern photography’s most important minds. The book is still available today, the only title we have ever published with lilac casewrap.

RIP Max.