“I think what we see and choose to photograph is more a reflection of our inner state. My work reflects the strivings of a certain kind of American photographer: a yearning for the road, a need for connection and the search for home.” —James Carroll (1940–2024) Captured over the course of more than forty years on streets across the USA, James Carroll’s photographs present a unique collection of historic Americana. Driven by a need to preserve memory—of his own experiences and those of others—and what curator and contributing writer Sean Corcoran describes as »his yearning to see, know, and understand,« Carroll explores the imperma- nence of human lives and relationships. The images take us back and forth from a documentary approach to a more subjective realm, in which the author imagines new scenarios in chance encounters, while still commenting on the American scene. The majority of the black-and-white photographs in The Lives of Others were made with a Leica M3. James Carroll passed away in early April, 2024. This book, which he was able to oversee through completion, now serves as a homage to his life’s work. The Lives of Others is a retrospective of one of America’s great street photographers collecting many previously unpublished works from a career spanning more than four decades.