Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Katz attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met his future wife Jane Mayhall.
[1] Katz had obtained the funds to operate the press and his other business ventures by selling a series of paintings by Eakins that his father had purchased secretly and placed in locations scattered around Baltimore.
[1] The company's first book was a replica of the original 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, the collection of twelve poems written by Walt Whitman that he had published himself.
[3] Another of the early books was Message From the Interior, a collection of photographs by Walker Evans, who was best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration that captured the effects of the Great Depression.
[2] A January 1993 show at the Zabriskie Gallery in New York City featured selections of 14 works published by the Eakins Press, along with samples of the art produced by the artists highlighted in the books.