Born in paris in the 1920’s, daughter of Manès Lévy a french industrialist (mainly in the car industry), and of a british mother, Deb Barnett. During the war, because her father was jewish they had to leave Paris and hide in the small village of Vaujany in the mountains above Grenoble. Kathleen immigrated to the United States in 1948 and became an American citizen. She worked for the New York Times, then for Vogue Magazine as model editor from 1950 to 1955. In 1955 she became the agent and assistant of the famous fashion photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. She married Erwin’s son Henry in 1956. After her children were born in 1957 and in 1960, she became a photographer under the guidance of Erwin Blumenfeld. Kathleen Blumenfeld lived and worked in Princeton New-Jersey until 1967, then in Geneva, Switzerland, then in Gif-sur-Yvette, France from 1970. She specialized in portrait photography of famous people and in reportages, which she thought of and published in magazines such as Vogue, Paris-Match, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Figaro Magazine, Le Jardin des Modes, Elle, and many others. Some of the themes of her reportages were in the field of the Arts, Fashion, Sciences or the Circus and the Theater. She had many solo exhibits in Europe and in the U.S. She was for instance for 8 years photographer for the Comédie Française, photographs which were exhibited at the Prague French Cultural Center in April-May 1986. She died in 2011.
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