Michael Martone was born in New York City in 1941, where he began photographing and printing as a child in 1953. Martone apprenticed with many famous New York photographers, illustrated for Vogue and Riverside Jazz Recordings, and worked for Life. He is the author of Dark Light (Lustrum Press, NY 1973) and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Fogg Museum (Harvard University), The Marlborough Gallery (New York), and The Howard Greenberg Gallery (New York). He has been a contributor to The New Yorker magazine and New York magazine, among other publications.