Born in Los Angeles in 1949, Bruce Talamon made his name chronicling the golden age of soul, funk, and R&B in the 1970s and 1980s. He pursued a degree in political science at Whittier College in California, and then studied abroad in Berlin, where he obtained his first camera and decided to become a professional photographer. In 1972, he photographed backstage at the Watts Festival in Los Angeles and began making portraits of musical legends. The 2018 publication Bruce W. Talamon: Soul, R&B, Funk, Photographs 1972–1982 includes many of his iconic pictures of musicians and performers, including James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson Five, and Diana Ross, among others. Over the course of his career, Talamon has had an extensive client list and photographed for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, People, Rolling Stone, Hello, Paris Match, Vanity Fair, Ebony, and Jet.

Stanley Nelson is the foremost chronicler of the African American experience working in nonfiction film today. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Nelson was awarded a Peabody in 2016. He has received numerous honors over the course of his career, including the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences. In 2013, President Barack Obama presented Nelson with the National Medal in the Humanities. Nelson’s film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016) is the first comprehensive, feature-length documentary portrait of that iconic organization. The film won the 2016 NAACP Image Award. Another notable films is the Emmy-nominated The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999), a sweeping portrait of over a century of independent Black journalism. In 2000, Nelson, along with his wife, Marcia A. Smith, founded Firelight Media and Firelight Films to support and facilitate the nonfiction work of filmmakers of color.