Lucy Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium, and is the author of seven books, her first being Low Life (FSG, 1991). Sante's other books include Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, The Other Paris, Folk Photography, and, most recently, Maybe the People Would Be the Times. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award, Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), and an Infinity Award for Writing from the International Center of Photography. Sante has contributed to the New York Review of Books since 1981 and to many other publications. She teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College and lives in Ulster County, New York.

Tim Davis studied photography at Bard College, graduating in 1991. He pursued a career as a poet and editor in New York before returning to photography, receiving an MFA from Yale University in 2001. He has since had solo shows in Brussels, Geneva, Whitecube in London, Milan, and New York, including a recent exhibition at the Bohen Foundation. His work is in the collections of the Guggenheim, Whitney, Brooklyn, and Metropolitan Museums in New York; the Milwaukee Museum of Art; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Baltimore Museum; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and numerous others. His fourth book of photographs and essays, I'm Looking Through You, was published by Aperture in May 2021. He teaches photography at Bard College.