Tom Young was born in 1951 in Boston, Massachusetts. He received his M.F.A. in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977. He is currently a professor of art, emeritus, at Greenfield Community College in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He has been awarded an Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and four Artist Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His work is included in numerous permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Polaroid International Collection in Offenbach, Germany, and Harvard University's Fogg Museum.

Young's work has been exhibited internationally, including the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Frans Hals Museum in Harlem, The Netherlands, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, and the National Museum of Fine Arts at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. In addition to Recycled Realities, he is the author of Timeline: Learning to See with My Eyes Closed (George F. Thompson Publishing, 2012). His photographs have also appeared in a number of publications, including Artworks: Tom Young (Williams College Museum of Art), American Perspectives (Tokyo Museum of Photography), Goodbye to Apple Pie (DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts), and 2 to Tango: Collaboration in Recent American Photography(International Center of Photography). He resides in Buckland, Massachusetts.