Born 1916, Manhattan, New York
Lives in New York

Lepkoff grew up on the Lower East Side, the child of Russian immigrants. She spent her young adulthood as a dancer in the pioneering modern-dance company of Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. She also performed with the Experimental Dance Group, headed by Bill Matons, at venues around the city. Money earned dancing at the New York World's Fair in 1939 enabled her to buy her first camera, and she took free classes with Arnold Eagle at the National Youth Administration (1939–42). In 1945 she joined the Photo League, where she studied with Sid Grossman, Paul Strand, and Walter Rosenblum; served as treasurer of the executive committee (1950); and participated in the exhibition "This Is the Photo League" (1948–49). She is best known for her photographs of immigrant life on the Lower East Side from the late 1940s and 1950s, published in a monograph in 2006. In 1962 Lepkoff left the city to raise her family in Teaneck, New Jersey; during the 1970s she was awarded a grant from the New Jersey Council of the Arts to photograph senior citizens. In 1979 Lepkoff moved back to New York City, where she continues to live and photograph. Her work appeared in the exhibition "The Women of the Photo League" at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009) and was featured in two exhibitions at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York (2010, 2012).