BOARD Members

Board of Directors

Karen Gaines

Co-Founder and President
Karen Gaines is an archivist and former editor of photography and picture researcher at Time magazine, People magazine, and other Time Warner Publications. In her career as a picture editor and at PCPP, she has assigned, edited, and worked to preserve the collections of some of the best and best-known photographers of our time. Among other projects, she ran photographic coverage for the official record of President Barack Obama’s 2009 Inauguration and worked with the Smithsonian Institution on its exhibition of those pictures. A graduate of Tufts University with a BFA in Photography, she furthered her expertise by earning an M.S.L.I.S. (Masters in Information and Library Science) from Pratt Institute. Currently, she serves as an Ambassador at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, where she continues to contribute to the preservation and promotion of American history through visual storytelling.

Beth Iskander

Secretary | Independent Photographs Specialist, Archivist and Advisor
As Vice President/Senior Specialist in photography at Sotheby’s from 2003 to 2016 and director of the Time Inc. Picture Collection for the previous 28 years, Beth Iskander is widely renowned for her unmatched expertise in the field of photography. At the Time Inc. archive, one of the largest and most important collections in the world, she supervised everything from the cataloguing and preservation of its 20 million images to research, editing, copyright, and acquisitions. An authority on some of the 20th-century’s preeminent photojournalists—Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, W. Eugene Smith, and all the other great TIME and LIFE photographers—she also drove the creation of a digital database for the entire collection. A frequent lecturer on archiving and databases, she is certified in the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP), adopted by the U.S. Congress as the official standard, and was involved in Sotheby’s most successful photo sales, including Important Photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Photographs from the Polaroid Collection. A graduate of Salem College, she did her post-graduate work in 20th-century American and European Art at the University of Illinois.

Nancy Wolff

Director | Partner, Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
Nancy Wolff is a partner at the intellectual property, media and entertainment law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP located in New York, NY, and Beverly Hills, CA.  She represents a wide range of creative individuals and companies in all areas of digital media, art law, licensing, and publishing and serves as counsel to the Digital Media Licensing Association. Nancy is co-chair of the firm’s Litigation Department and co-chair of the firm’s Art Law Group based on her deep knowledge of copyright, defamation, and other third-party rights.

She represents photographers, artists, collectors, museums, galleries, and publishers in all transactional issues. She provides guidance on best practices in using content and offers guidance in areas of content, and a pre-publication review of books, documentaries, films, podcasts, and television series. Nancy counsels on creative deal structuring, the acquisition and sale of properties and art collections, and reviews licensing and services agreements; exhibition agreements, and agreements involving interactive and emerging technologies.

Nancy is a frequent speaker throughout the United States and Europe on copyright, media, and licensing and has received significant recognition for her expertise in copyright law. She is a Past President of the Copyright Society of the USA (CSUSA) and a member of the ABA IP Task Force on Copyright Reform. She has been published by Allworth Press, ABA Landslide Journal, and a book of essays she co-edited on 21st Century Copyright Law published with Focal Press.

Sandra Craig

Director | Advisor
A native New Yorker and retired attorney, Sandra lives in Paris and Rome, where she and her husband raised their five children. She is a world traveling art collector and proponent of arts education.
In terms spanning the last 2 decades, as trustee and Board President of the Newport Art Museum, she supported its mission to champion a provocative diversity of creative voices and experiences. Committed to growing and conserving museum collections, exemplary exhibitions, preserving its historic buildings, and making art accessible, increasingly through digital means, she was guided by her belief in the power of art to inspire and transform lives. 
A believer in the transformative power of bilingual liberal arts education, for many years she has served on the boards of the American University of Paris, where currently she chairs the Student Affairs Committee, and St. Stephen’s School, Rome, Italy, where as VP she chaired the Rome Committee, and is currently Development Committee chair.

Daile Kaplan

Director | Appraiser
Daile Kaplan is the Photographs specialist on PBS’ popular tv program, Antiques Roadshow and a certified, USPAP-compliant appraiser of Photographs and Photobooks. She served on the board of directors of the Appraisers Association of America for twelve years.  She is Vice President and Director of Photograph and Photobooks at Swann Auction Galleries, NY, where she has organized more than 80 sales and sold approximately 40,000 classical, contemporary and vernacular photographs and rare photobooks.

Ms. Kaplan has lectured extensively about the photographs market at professional conferences and been quoted in The New York Times, Financial Times, U.S. News & World Report, Art & Auction, and numerous other publications. She is also a collector of 3-d objects highlighted with photographs, for which she coined the term “pop photographica.” Works from her collection have been exhibited at the Morgan Library and Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Parrish Art Museum. She serves on the board of directors of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, was a member of the board of advisors of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, and is member of the Photographs Vetting Committee, the Park Avenue Winter Antiques Show.

Nat Nichols

Director | Co-Principal of Creative Solutions NY LLC
Nat Nichols is a photographer and filmmaker whose pursuit of photography began in 1976. His work has appeared in Theatre Times, Broadway.com, and The New York Times. Nat is Co-Principal of Creative Solutions NY LLC, a marketing and media-consulting group. He is a member of American Photographic Artists (APA) and a founding member of the Black Photographers Collective.

Amina Lakhaney

Executive Director
Amina Lakhaney was the studio manager and archivist for renowned Magnum photographer, Bruce Davidson, for nearly a decade. During this time she catalogued and organized his expansive 20,000+ print archive as well as worked on numerous acquisitions for private collections and museums. Lakhaney has edited many of Davidson’s monographs including the catalog for his retrospective exhibition with MAPFRE. She has also worked in the retail market with notable New York galleries, Howard Greenberg Gallery and Bruce Silverstein Gallery. Amina continues to work with photographers, advising on archive and collections management. She received her BFA in photography from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Penelope Dixon

Co-Founder and President Emeritus
Penelope Dixon's long career in fine-art photography, which began in the auction houses of Manhattan (Phillips Son & Neale and Argus, Ltd.), includes service on the boards of a number of arts organizations, frequent lectures to professional audiences, and contributions to articles and books. Among other works, she is the author of Photographers of the Farm Security Administration: An Annotated Bibliography. She is best known, however, as the proprietor of the well-known appraisal firm she founded some 35 years ago, Penelope Dixon & Associates, which numbers some of the most prominent photographers and collections in the world among its clients. 

ADVISORY BOARD

Cat Celebrezze

Creative Collections Studio Consultant, Supercargo Consulting LLC
Cat Celebrezze is Founder and Principal at Supercargo Consulting, a full service creative and estate collection management consulting firm with offices on both the East Coast and West Coast. Supercargo Consulting is a resource for collections of fine art, wine, books, photography, audio-visual material, furniture/decorative arts, and more, specializing in streamlined, cloud-based database architecture. Cat also works as CEO and Executive Producer for all music releases by East Meets West Music, the official recording label of The Ravi Shankar Foundation, including Ravi Shankar’s Grammy-winning CD, The Living Room Sessions Part 1. Cat holds a PhD in Sociology from The New School for Social research, an MA from Ohio University, and a BA from John Carroll University.

Charles Daniel “Danny” Dawson

Professor, photographer
A multi-talented artist, Prof. C. Daniel Dawson has worked as a photographer, filmmaker, curator, arts administrator, consultant and scholar. He has served as Curator of Photography, Film and Video at the Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), Director of Special Projects at the Caribbean Cultural Center (NYC) and Curatorial Consultant and Director of Education at the Museum for African Art (NYC). Prof. Dawson has also taught seminars on African Spirituality in the Americas at Columbia University, the University of Iowa, New York University and Yale University.  

Howard Greenberg

Founder, Howard Greenberg Gallery
Howard Greenberg is one of the world's foremost photography gallerists. He is an authority on 19th and 20th century photography, and has been an acknowledged leader of establishing its value on the fine art market. In recognition of these efforts, and his matchless collection of more than 30,000 photographs, American Photo magazine proclaimed Greenberg one of the 25 most important people in photography.

Joel Meyerowitz

Photographer
Joel Meyerowitz is a street photographer and portrait and landscape photographer. He began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. In the early 1970s he taught photography at the Cooper Union in New York City.
His work is in the collections of the International Center of Photography, Museum of Modern Art, and New York Public Library, all in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Robert Pledge

President of the Board of the Catherine Leroy Fund
Robert Pledge in 1976, with a small group of highly talented photographers of various nationalities,  co-founded in New York Contact Press Images. He has curated photographic exhibitions throughout the world and sat on major international juries. Pledge is currently a member of the Board of Trustee of ‘The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund’ and  the President of the Board of Trustees of the  Catherine Leroy’ Fund. 

Edward Yee

 President, Penelope Dixon & Associates, Inc.
Starting as a computer consultant to Penelope Dixon Associates in 1996, Edward Yee became increasingly involved with photographic collection management and eventually appraisals and valuation over the past two decades. While working on a myriad of appraisal projects, he specializes in the valuation of negatives, large archives & estates, including the BlackStar Archive, National Geographic, and Magnum, among many others.  His background in computer science and business has served him well as an appraisal practice requires a strong balance of art and science to bring objectivity to a field often mired in subjectivity.  As a partner in the firm for fifteen years, Edward oversees all operations and appraisals, serves as the CFO and data management specialist for the firm.  Effective 2019, while maintaining its existing organizational structure, Edward will become the sole owner of Penelope Dixon & Associates as he prepares to continue the firm’s on going commitment to providing the best appraisals possible in the photographic arts.  In addition to his appraisal responsibilities Edward also serves on the Executive Board of the Appraisers Association of America.