New York City native Dennis Stock (1928–2010) left home at 17 to join the United States Navy. In 1947, he became an apprentice to Life magazine photographer Gjon Mili and won first prize in the publication’s Young Photographers contest. He joined the photographic cooperative Magnum Photos in 1951. Stock is perhaps best known for his iconic photographs of Hollywood stars, most notably James Dean, as well as his lively portraits of jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Gene Krupa, and Duke Ellington, which were published in the book Jazz Street (Doubleday, 1960). In 1968, Stock took a one-year leave of absence from Magnum to create the film-production company Visual Objectives, where he shot several documentaries. He subsequently served as president of Magnum’s film and new-media division in 1969 and 1970. His photographic subjects in the ensuing years included California hippies, landscapes, and the architecture of large cities. Stock taught numerous workshops and exhibited his work widely in France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., and Japan.

John Jacob is the McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He has been director of the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University; director of Legacy Programs at the Magnum Foundation, New York; and director of the Inge Morath Foundation, New York. Jacob’s books include Inge Morath: First Color (2009), Man Ray: Trees + Flowers - Insects Animals (2009), and 2012’s Kodak Girl: From the Martha Cooper Collection, all published by Steidl. Recent exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. include Welcome Home: A Portrait of East Baltimore, 1975–1980 (2021), New on View: Dawoud Bey and William H. Johnson (2020), Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen (2018), Diane Arbus: A Box of Ten Photographs (2018), and Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten (2016).