William Kurtz born Wilhelm Kurz (1833 – December 5, 1904) was a German-American artist, illustrator, and photographer.

Born in Hesse, Germany, he was apprenticed to a lithographer in Offenbach am Main at a young age and showed considerable artistic talent, taking first place in exhibitions while attending an art school there.

[1] In 1865, he entered into a partnership with fellow photographer George G. Rockwood,[1] who was credited with popularizing the carte de visite in America.

The two of them practiced a technique called "photosculpture", which involved taking up to 24 simultaneous photographs of a subject from various angles to assist a sculptor to create a sculpture of that person.

Kurtz perfected a process using a series of reflectors to concentrate and bounce sunlight onto the subject's face.

The winter months proved to be especially problematic (as demand for studio portraits happened to rise then), and Kurtz was one of the first people to use electric lighting to achieve the same effect.