Douglas Biggert was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1941 and raised in St Louis, MO, where he attended Principia College and later graduated from Washington University. His first exposure to photography was as a child, when given a camera by his aunt though he didn’t begin photographing in earnest until he was living in California, with the Sandal Shop series. By nature a wanderer, Biggert himself first hitchhiked through the southwest as a teenager and around Europe during a summer abroad while in college. He eventually found his way to California, living first in Balboa, in Orange County, later moving to San Francisco and then Sacramento. The urge to explore never left him however. By his own admission, Biggert has visited all fifty states, in part through his own wanderlust but also through his role as the manager of global distribution of magazines for Tower Records, a position he held from 1978 until 1999. In this capacity, Biggert was hugely influential in proving distribution and exposure for a nascent Zine scene, sometimes supporting publishers directly to see an issue produced.