After World War II the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco hired renowned photographer Ansel Adams to establish one of the first fine art photography departments in the United States. The caliber of teachers and guest instructors assembled there under the new directorship of Douglas McAgy was unmatched, and the school was one of the most avant-garde art schools of its time. On hand were photographers Adams and Minor White, along with Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Lisette Model, Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, and Homer Page.

Three former students of Adams and White—William Heick, Ira H. Latour and C. Cameron Macauley, later known as the “Three Musketeers”—began planning a book that would focus on CSFA’s photography department, covering the years between 1945 and 1955, the period known as “The Golden Decade.” It was a lucky coincidence when Ken Ball and his wife Victoria Whyte Ball (whose father, Don Whyte, had bequeathed them an abundance of negatives and contact prints from his student years at CSFA) joined them. Together this team has embarked on an important journey into photography’s past that is embodied in this book.