Karen Furth died on May 4th, 2024, after a long and brave battle with cancer. She was 63 years old. She left behind her beloved husband of 22 years, James Nubile, and son, Alex, 15.
Born in New York City to her parents John and Mary (Autry) Furth on March 16th, 1961, she was the eldest of three and was a loving sister to Susan and Robin.
Karen grew up in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, attended Upper Darby High School and then the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a degree in US History in 1983.
While at Penn, she discovered her love of art and especially, photography. Soon after graduating, she moved to New York City to attend NYU for graduate school. Her drive, curiosity and openness to her vocation sustained her through the “lean” years, where she formed life-long friendships with other women artists and was a founding member of a women’s art collective – Gallery 494 in 1991, and later, Pulse Art.
In the late 1980s, she was hired by the National Museum of the American Indian to be their in-house photographer and photo conservator. She fell in love with this work, the culture, and history and further contributed her well-earned skills and intellect to the emerging conversation about how historical narratives are presented to the public. She traveled zealously and intrepidly through the indigenous regions of South and Central America, where she had a brush with the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. These working journeys only fueled her passion for documentary photography even more.
After leaving the NMAI, Karen became the director of a New York City photography program in a supportive housing SRO called “The Times Square”. Her students ran the gamut from the formerly homeless, to mentally ill and low-income New Yorkers struggling to make a life in New York City. Karen drew out the best in people and this class produced meaningful imagery by a mostly overlooked population. Convinced of the importance of such programs, she applied for and won a grant from the Open Society Institute for the Time Square Photography Project to appear in the subway cars of the New York City transit system. As a result, millions of New Yorkers could enjoy the art from a mostly unseen and unheard source of such meaningful expression – the marginalized that lived amongst us.
This project brought out several of the essential truths of Karen: she was a natural teacher and she believed that the collective voice of groups can be transformative. The project also established her as a working artist and educator, which she knew was her calling.
While doing adjunct teaching at several New York universities, she picked up work as an artist visiting hospital rooms to invite patients to make art. If anyone was built-to-order for such a task, it was Karen. Her boundless supply of empathy was her superpower. She was so affected by the encounters and the art made, that she created a photography class at The Creative Center: Arts for People in Healthcare for people battling cancer.
Karen was the guide for their artistic journeys providing direction and enthusiasm. She brought them along, encouraged them, cajoled them and created expectations for them – a particular inspiration for the participants that were terminally ill. She met everyone where they were – as she always did with everyone. She turned another group of individuals into a collective, full of passion and purpose. Karen knew self-expression was a therapeutic and complemented their medical care. She loved that group, and they loved her right back.
Once again, Karen realized the power of the collective voice with this special group of cancer patients and survivors. Following her usual “MO,” she wrote another successful grant to raise funds to publish a book of their collective work, resulting in: Still Life: Documenting Cancer Survivorship. Today, the book is a valuable resource for art therapists starting similar programs.
In 2007, the International Center of Photography hired Karen as an educational programs coordinator, and it is there that she finished her professional career in 2017.
Of all Karen’s artistic accomplishments, her signature project began in a New York City laundry room in her Washington Heights apartment building in 1993. There she met three little girls – and for all four that first encounter became a lifelong connection. While photographing them for almost thirty years, she became their surrogate, their advocate, their cheerleader, their witness, their guide and always, their trusted friend. She loved them for all the joy they brought into her life, and they loved her for her undying belief in their potential.
Karen found love and her own family late in life – as did her unsuspecting husband. What started as a friendship pivoted on a late spring afternoon in 1998. The story retold on various anniversaries since – “Have I ever told you about the moment mom and I fell in love?” (Of course I had) “It was on West 86th Street. Mom was late, which was not unusual” (side-eye-smile from Karen). “Then she came up the subway steps and onto the sidewalk, backlit, flashing that signature smile – our eyes met – and we both knew. We were in love”. Since that moment, we never looked back, or sideways. Only forward, together.
The last piece of Karen’s life fell into place on what she always described as the happiest day of her life – September 23rd, 2008 – when Alex was born. Part pusher, part pushover, but always present and ever-disciplined in her priorities – Alex came first (and second and third). While our marriage brought a shared happiness, Alex brought the unmitigated and unfiltered joy – and completeness. She danced with him, sang with him, she read to him, advocated for him and she marveled at his unique (and often scary) physical abilities. The true tragedy of her life is that she will not get to see the man of whom she put so much into building his foundation and loved unconditionally.
Karen’s life can be defined by her caring and empathy – for friends and strangers alike. One could fill a thick volume with her acts of kindness, her ability to listen and to be there for others. She lived her core beliefs, spoke her mind, and acted on those beliefs.
Karen left an abundance of love in her generous wake and inevitably, great heartbreak from the loss of her radiant presence. In a life cut short, she touched countless lives and is greatly missed. Her loving memory sustains those she left behind.
