Kate Seston Matthews was born in 1870 in New Albany, Indiana, but her family soon moved to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, where she lived until her death. Educated at home, she was introduced to photography by relatives and acquired her first camera at the age of 16.

In an era when few women ventured into photography, Matthews made a name for herself when her photos were published in Youth's Companion, Illustrated American, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping. In 1895 Southern Magazine featured her, along with sculptor Enid Yandell, in an article celebrating the young women artists.

Kate Matthew's devotion to photography was thought eccentric in her small and very traditional southern community, a wealthy suburb of Louisville. Matthews found strength and support, however, through her connections with a larger world. She read the best journals and her work reveals a knowledge of current trends and artistic movements in the U.S. and abroad. Although her papers and most of her prints and negatives were lost in a fire shortly after her death in 1956, she is known to have corresponded with the editors of a number of journals, including Alfred Stieglitz.

Matthews chose as her subjects the people, architecture, and landscape of Pewee Valley. She is perhaps best known for her illustrations in Annie Fellows Johnston's books The Little Colonel (1895) and The Land of the Little Colonel (1929). Matthews herself was portrayed as the character Miss Katharine Marks in another series by Johnston.

Ms. Matthews' photographs were first exhibited at the University of Louisville in May, 1956. Her photographs are in the collections of the High Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. The Photographic Archives of the University of Louisville's Ekstrom Library has the largest collection of her prints.