Wayne Thom was born in Shanghai in 1933. His work, which spans five decades, documents modern architecture throughout the Western United States and the Pacific Rim, with the bulk of his work documenting the greater Los Angeles area. Thom is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Modern Masters Award of the Los Angeles Conservancy (2015), and life membership in the Professional Photographers of America. He has worked with significant modern architects of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries including A. Quincy Jones, William Pereira, Arthur Erickson, John Portman, Gio Ponti, SOM, and his brother, Bing Thom.
Emily Bills is an author, curator, and faculty at Woodbury University. Dr. Bills has contributed essays to books on architectural and urban history, including Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America and Visual Merchandising: The Image of Selling. Her coauthored book California Captured, Mid-Century Modern Architecture (Phaidon, 2018) won a Glenn Goldman Art, Architecture & Photography Award by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association for its perspective on the life and work of architectural photographer Marvin Rand. Her next book, Linking Up Los Angeles: How the Telephone Built a City, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.
