Childhood friends Luis Medina and José Lopez met up again as adults after having emigrated from Cuba to the United States. In 1966, they went to study sculpture together at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where they began using cameras to aid them with their work and soon found themselves gravitating to photography rather than sculpture. “We weren’t thinking about becoming professional photographers, but we found that in collaboration we produced interesting pictures,” Medina explained in a 1973 interview in the Chicago Tribune.  The two artists were drawn to their subjects through unanimity of vision. “We learned to work so well together that now one of us might go out and shoot a picture, and later the other could go out and get the identical shot,” Medina noted. Throughout their decade-long collaboration, Medina and Lopez captured architectural subjects such as a Frank Lloyd Wright house, as well as lively scenes of daily life in the vibrant Puerto Rican community of Chicago.