James was born in London. He now lives in Marseille, France.

 

His career to date has been very much a naturally evolving process of experimentation in different genres of photography, from reportage and portraiture to contemporary documentary work. For over a decade James has been concentrating on fine-art projects, both personal and commissioned.

Working with this artistic freedom, unconstrained by pre-formulated ideas of what art is, could be considered to be founded on an absence of classical training or education in photography.

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‘Banned’, a photographic essay he shot in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Taliban, received widespread acclaim and he was the recipient of several international awards. Images from the series were exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London, in 2005.

 

‘Lightscapes’, a long-term landscape project was selected for the Hyeres International Festival of Fashion and Photography, in 2010. Subsequently James collaborated with the celebrated Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten. Images from James’ Lightscapes series were reproduced on fabric to create garments for Dries’ 2012 Summer women’s collection. Following the success of Dries’ catwalk show in Paris exhibitions were organised of James’ work, alongside some of the garments from the collection, in Vienna, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo and Atlanta. 

 

In 2015 James was invited as the first fine-art photographer to visit Diavik, a diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The work he produced there over 3 days - ’64 Degrees North’ was exhibited at Kensington Palace, in London.

 

‘Pinks' is a collection of macro images of some of the world’s rarest diamonds. James was invited to Perth, Australia and given exclusive access to these stones, each one cut and polished but as yet unset in jewellery and in their individual pure form.

 

The Glenrothes, one of the world’s leading whisky distilleries, commissioned James in 2023 to shoot their extraordinary sculpture ‘Philos’, an exquisite testimony to their extensive knowledge of whisky.

 

In 2024 he travelled to the far northeast of Argentina to what has become known as the Lithium triangle, an area that borders Chile, Bolivia and Argentina and contains vast deposits of this abundant yet often challenging to mine resource, seen by many as essential for the world’s transition away from fossil fuels.

 

Villa 356, a private house designed by renowned architect Rudy Ricciotti was completed in 2012. Since 2015 James has been working on a number of different long-term projects about the property. In late 2024 the fifth and final project was finished, completing a body of work that focuses on different aspects of the property and challenged James to develop new shooting techniques, not least to allow him to shoot long exposure underwater architectural images, lit only by the moon.

 

Since 2019 James has been collaborating with the CPPM, the Centre for Particle Physics of Marseille, that works very closely with CERN in Switzerland. The CPPM work on a diverse range of mind-blowing projects that delve deep into the fabric of our universe. Science and in particular physics has always fascinated James and his ongoing relationship with the CPPM is providing him with a source of endless inspiration and several projects that are ongoing.