Rebecca Lynn Barnard was born in 1953 and grew up in St Louis, Missouri. She studied at Washington University, where she received a BA in music and and MA in English Literature. She began photographing in earnest in her thirties. She studied at St Louis Community College at Forest Park where her teachers included John Hilgert. Her photographs are in the collection of Wells Fargo. In 2008, Maryville University in St Louis devoted both rooms of its art gallery to a retrospective exhibit of more than twenty years of her work, including the series of Polaroid prints presented in this book. Two years earlier she had been diagnosed with progressive cognitive loss (similar to Alzheimer's disease). She took her last photograph in September 2008.