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Trained as a sculptor, Stanley Mock had begun some experiments with photography-based metal etching techniques at the University of Kentucky shortly before he was invited to teach sculpture at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1970. Landing in the hotbed of photographic experimentation that was the UCLA art department at the time, he quickly became immersed, working with graduate students (such as Ellen Brooks and Michael Stone) who were combining sculptural and photographic ideas. He also created friendships with such UCLA faculty as Robert Fichter, Llyn Foulkes, Judith Golden and Robert Heinecken.

The spectacularly large-scale photographic works Mock produced in the early 1970s relate to his sculptural background, both in their size and their subject matter. (“They deal with figures and structures in spacial situations… set up in my studio,” he says.) As roughly 1:1 transcriptions of the conditions presented to the camera, works like The Dancer I, 1973, were attempts to replicate significant formal details of the experience. As Mock writes, “I am interested in some small residue of humanity that I find lingers in photographic images.”