Born in Germany in 1843, John Karl Hillers immigrated to the United States in 1852. He worked various jobs and served in the Civil War until he was hired by John Wesley Powell as an oarsman, and later promoted in 1872 as chief photographer, on the various Powell Surveys of the Grand Canyon. In 1879, he continued working for the government and began photographing New Mexico and Arizona for a survey by the Bureau of American Ethnology. During this time, Hillers took on a more ethnographic focus, sympathetically capturing the lives of the Native Americans of the surveyed lands.

On an expedition led by James Stevenson, Hillers photographed the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. Hillers was a prolific photographer, with over 20,000 negatives to his name and success in both the scientific and artistic genres of photography. A. H. Thompson, a fellow teammate on the Powell survey, named a summit in the Henry Mountain Range in honor of Hillers.