The son of a Swedish immigrant, William Albert Allard was born in 1937. He studied at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and the University of Minnesota. One of the few photographers of his generation whose entire professional body of work is in color, he has contributed to National Geographic Society publications as a staff, freelance, and contract photographer and writer since 1964. Over the course of his career at National Geographic, Allard has contributed to some 30 National Geographic magazine articles and several National Geographic books. He has been published in major U.S. and European publications as well as several critically acclaimed books, including Vanishing Breed, The Photographic Essay, A Time We Knew- Images of Yesterday in the Basque Homeland, Time at the Lake- A Minnesota Album, and Portraits of America. A former contributor to Magnum Photos, Allard's prints appear in many private and museum collections.