Photographic portrait of Chuck Close.

Chuck Close was an American painter and photographer, known for his large scale art works. He was born in Monroe, Washington on 5 July 1940. Close was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 1964. He was awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2000. He died in New York in 2021 from congestive heart failure.

The American photographer Nancy Lee Katz produced, over a 25-year period, an impressive series of portraits she named 'Pantheon'. This photograph is one from such series, which comprises dozens of portraits of writers, artists, musicians and other public figures, mostly within the art world, whose work Katz personally admired. The project remained a private undertaking for the photographer and the works had never been published or exhibited during her lifetime.