In 1936 they lost the family store and returned to the Bronx, eventually settling in what was then the working-class neighborhood of Manhattan's Washington Heights.
A German refugee couple who were the owners of a studio to which he was making a delivery on sensing his interest in their work encouraged him to pursue photography.
Rather than wait to be drafted, in 1942 he volunteered for the Air Corps as a corporal aerial cartographer, developing film taken from aircraft to assess the success of their bombing runs.
[1] Upon his return to the United States, Kattelson joined the Photo League and studied under Sid Grossman and Paul Strand and later was enrolled in the Hans Hofmann School of Art.
He served as an executive member and teacher at the Photo League until it disbanded in 1951 during the Red Scare after being declared "subversive" and a front for the Communist Party.
[10] In the 1980s, he returned to photography, producing photographs that continued the themes of his earlier work while capturing the dynamism of urban life through collage and multiple exposures.
While never purely a formalist, Kattelson's photographs often use the geometry of urban structures or the multiple reflections of storefronts or subway windows to create densely layered settings for his introspective portraits.
The people in his photographs, often witnessed in mid gesture, and sometimes in mournful or strained connection to one another, are treated in an unsentimental manner that conveys both their individual character and their anonymity in the larger city.
Vivien Raynor, writing in the New York Times has said, "Mr. Kattelson's weakness - if it can be called that - is his respect for the strangers he photographs... His presence is never felt, but his inquiring yet merciful sensibility is everywhere.