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Rockwell used photos, taken by a rotating cast of photographers, to make his illustrations — and all of his models were neighbors and friends, including that little boy! Rockwell never kept it a secret, but for some reason this little fact has been neglected in recent decades. Although he may not have clicked the shutter, Rockwell directed every facet of every composition.

A little girl with a black eye, an elderly woman saying grace with her grandson, a boy going to war: Rockwellian scenes represent a certain sentimental America — an ideal America, or at least Rockwell's ideal. Over the course of 47 years, he had more than 300 cover images for Saturday Evening Post magazine. Then he went on to create more for Look Magazine. But those illustrations might never have existed without the help of photography.

A new book, Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera, reveals Rockwell's use of photographs in his illustrative process. There's also a companion exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. While getting permission to use some of the photographs for an online gallery, I was told that for two of the images, I would need to speak to Clemens Kalischer — a name that appears nowhere in the book or in the exhibition. On the other end of the phone line came a gravelly and reticent voice — a voice with quite a story. NPR's Jacki Lyden went up to Stockbridge to speak to him in person.