Born 1923, Bronx, New York
Died 2018, Rhinebeck, New York

Kattelson attended New York's Stuyvesant High School with the intention of becoming an engineer, but left to help support his family. He worked first as a delivery boy for the Aremac Camera store and then as a darkroom assistant for the Stone-Wright Studio. During World War II he served as an aerial cartographer in the Army Air Corps. In 1947 he joined the Photo League, where he studied with Sid Grossman and Paul Strand. He went on to teach courses there on basic technique (1949) and advanced technique (1950), and served as chair of the darkroom committee (1950). His work was exhibited in "This Is the Photo League" (1948–49) and "New Workers" (1949).

Through Grossman, Kattelson met the Abstract Expressionist artist Hans Hofmann, with whom he studied painting in 1951–53, as the League was closing its doors. By the 1950s he had an established career in commercial color photography: first, in 1952–55, as a photographer for Glamour magazine on fashion shoots, then as director of color reproduction at the Jack Ward Company (1958–61). He remained close to Grossman until his death and worked on the latter's posthumously published Journey to the Cape (1959). In 1961 he moved to Woodstock, where he established the first art house movie theater in upstate New York. In the 1980s Kattelson began exhibiting his photographs again at both galleries and museums in the United States and Europe.