Award-winning photographer dead at age 61

Craig Smith | The New Mexican

9/1/2008 - 9/2/08

Cary Herz, whose work appeared in publications including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Time, Newsweek, and People, and whose highly praised images included studies of Los Angeles gang members and descendants of New Mexico's crypto-Jews, died Monday in Albuquerque. Herz, who had been under hospice care since recently undergoing surgery for ovarian cancer, was 61.

Herz's photographic work first gained national attention in the 1970s when she recorded the early days of the women's movement for Ms. Magazine. She also became known for her documentation of female athletes, who were gaining a prominent presence in media of the day.

Over the years, she expanded her portfolio to include corporate, government and private clients as well as media, including AT&T, the Discovery Channel, St. Joseph's Healthcare Systems, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Mexican, the U.S. Department of Commerce and United Way.

She was a former New York Times photo correspondent, and her work was regularly distributed by The Associated Press. As a volunteer, she photographed children in Guatemala before and after cleft palate surgery, and took pictures of AIDS victims in Thailand to help raise awareness of the disease's global reach.

Herz was born in New York City and moved to New Mexico in 1984, where she established her own business, Cary Herz Photography, in 1987. Her most recent book, New Mexico's Crypto-Jews: Image and Memory, was published by The University of New Mexico Press in 2007 and won the Best Nonfiction Book (Religion) award for 2008 from the National Federation of Press Women. It was the culmination of a decades-long journey that began when Herz was photographing the Congregation Montefiore Cemetery in Las Vegas, N.M., in 1985.

"I was involved in the cleanup of the Jewish cemetery in Las Vegas," Herz told Pasatiempo in a December 2007 interview. "The people buried in the cemetery were mostly Germans who had settled in New Mexico during the late 1800s or early 1900s.

"Someone kept saying there were other Jews here, and I didn't know what they meant. Finally, from talking to people, I found out there were Jews who had come over as New Christians with the conquistadors. They settled in New Mexico and were Catholics but had kept remnants of Judaism.

"I had never heard of anything like that before. I went to a couple of meetings and saw a slide show of cemeteries that people in the crypto-Jewish community claimed were remnants of a hidden past."

Herz was a longtime member of the New Mexico Press Women's Association. She served eight years on the state board of directors and was Albuquerque chapter president twice. NMPWA gave her its Communicator of Achievement award this past April and recently established a $2,500 scholarship fund in her name. Contributions to the Cary Herz Scholarship can be sent to association treasurer Sandy Schauer, P.O. Box 1054, Los Lunas, N.M. 87031-1054.

She is survived by her partner, Sue LeGrand; her children, Davielle LaKind of New York City and Alexandra LaKind of Glasgow, Scotland, and Santa Fe, and her partner's children.

A memorial service will be announced soon.

Staff writer Robert Nott contributed to this story.