Joe Alper was born in Brooklyn in 1925 to European immigrants. His lifelong love of photography finally blossomed into a vocation when, in 1960, he quit his job as a typesetter for a local newspaper and became a full-time freelance photographer. Joe's love of jazz, folk and blues music translated into a passion for performance photography. He traveled to New York City from his upstate New York apartment almost every weekend to photograph the jazz scene in Manhattan, and to Newport every summer for the Jazz and Folk Festivals from 1961-1965. As a result, his artist roster includes all the big names of the era: John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and literally hundreds more.

In the meantime, his wife Jackie, a folk singer and rabble rouser from way back, was helping Lena Spencer start up Caffé Lena in Saratoga, NY, now the oldest continually running coffee house in the country.

When 20 year old Bob Dylan first arrived in upstate NY to play at Lena's and the San Remo Coffee House in Schenectady in late 1961, he stayed at the Alper household, affording Joe the opportunity to photograph a side of the young Bob not commonly documented. His 600 or so images of Dylan taken from 1962 to 1965 are unusually unguarded; the intimacy is striking. The images show off Joe's unique style common to all of his performance photos.

Joe's reputation as a music photographer, as well as his ability to capture unique perspectives of architecture, water, and, frankly, all of his subject matter, led to increasing success. He was asked to start a photography program at State University of New York's Albany campus in 1967. Sadly, he was struck down by polycystic kidney disease in 1968.

Joe and Jackie had three children: Jaye, Jeri and George. Jeri died in 2000. Jackie passed away in September of 2007, while Jaye lives in Cambridge, MA and George lives in Tempe, AZ.