Jose Lopez was born in 1957 and grew up on the West Coast. He graduated from New Mexico State University in 1980 with a BA in journalism. Lopez worked as a staff photographer at various newspapers before being hired by John Durniak in 1984 at The New York Times. first working as staff photographer covering local and national news, and, from 1985 to 1994, in Washington D.C. covering the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations at the White House. Returning to New York City office, Lopez was director of photography and picture editor of several divisions of the paper, and taught at The New York Times Student Journalism Institute for 10 years. Since 2015, he has been a freelance picture editor. In 2002 he was a member of the picture editing team that won the Pulitzer Prize both in News and Feature categories. In 2019, he received the John Durniak Mentor award from the National Press Photographers Association, for mentoring many young photojournalists.