Photographer Inge Morath (1923–2002) was born in Graz, Austria. After working as a translator, journalist, and photo editor, she began taking photographs in 1951, and in 1955, she was invited to join the photographic cooperative Magnum Photos. In the following years, Morath worked worldwide, photographing stories for magazines such as Vogue, Holiday, and Paris Match. Her output also included production stills for motion pictures and an iconic series of portraits of subjects ranging from Louise Bourgeois to Philip Roth, who called her “the most engaging, sprightly, seemingly harmless voyeur I know.” Morath ultimately published more than 30 monographs of her work. After her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller—whom she met as a set photographer on The Misfits—in 1962, Morath settled in New York and Connecticut. She continued working until her death from cancer in 2002. Morath is the subject of Copyright by Inge Morath, a 1998 documentary by Sabine Eckhard.

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).