Steve Kahn (1943-2018) was part of an important generation of photographers coming out of Los Angeles in the 1970s that included Robert Heinecken, Ilene Segalove and Jerry McMillan, among others. They brought a conceptual and collage approach to photography, breaking away from the pure documentary impulse toward an interest in how photographs make meaning. Many were chronicled in the important exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum, Proof: Los Angeles and the Photograph: 1960-1980 and Kahn is also included in the 2011 book, L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980. Kahn’s work was widely exhibited throughout the 1970s and early 1980s at Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, Young/Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris. In the 1980s Kahn moved to New York City to pursue a career in commercial photography.
Recent museum acquisitions of Kahn’s work include Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Art Institute of Chicago, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the deYoung Museum, San Francisco. Most recent, a solo museum exhibition, Steve Kahn: The Hollywood Suites, took place at the deYoung Museum (San Francisco, CA) March, 2019.