JIM HERRINGTON

My chosen mode of traversing the globe through the decades has necessitated that I deposit ‘time capsules’ far and wide — bits and bobs of a life filed into long forgotten storage units, bus station lockers, basements of friends, attics of family and who knows what and where else.

Stuff changes meaning over time. Things you drag across the country in one direction or another, precious enough to save, years later you may not remember that you ever owned it, much less that it had some deeper value.

One of the most un-archival locales where I’ve chosen to drop my things has been my father’s attic. @livermore_lab would be hard pressed to mimic the extreme conditions found there and the effects of decades of freeze/thaw cycles that my various materials have undergone. Glacial winters, furnace-like summers under the bubbling black asphalt shingles as hot as a kiln. Malarial humidity. Some of my things have literally turned to dust. Diaries of thoughts now illegible, ink faded, papers eaten by microscopic bugs, electronics coagulate into molten masses. A stone plucked from the crest of some distant mountain summit, now far removed from it’s mother strata, patiently awaits for the inevitable collapse of the house and shifting tectonics to be absorbed back into the earth’s crust to confound some future geologist.

I’m home for the holidays and dad presented me with this — a roll of exposed film that he found up there amongst boxes of my detritus — best guesstimate is that it arrived there during a transcontinental move of mine in 1989.What’s on the roll? I’ll never know. Something worth photographing, I would have felt, in the late 1980s. However, Kodak ceased production of Kodachrome 64 in 2009, and processing of #Kodachrome worldwide ended on January 18, 2011.  The proprietary and complicated chemicals and processes involved in developing Kodachrome were only available at a handful of labs in the world, even during the heyday of production, and do not exist now.

On this roll are the latent images, the stored ghost images that rest in limbo in between the clicking of the shutter and the chemical development, stories waiting to be told, in the dark, for eternity.

It wasn’t without hiccups but 2021 was a vast improvement over 2020.

Proof: tortellini in brodo in Bologna instead of in my pajama kitchen.

I'm betting 2022 will be even better, chin up and Happy Holidays everyone!

Happy International Women’s Day.

This year I'm giving Berenice Abbott the shout out. I was lucky enough to discover her when I was quite young and she’s always been a favorite of mine. I went down the Abbott rabbit hole again last month and I still hold her in the highest regard, more so now than ever.

She was born in Ohio in the late 1890s, went to college there for two semesters, dropped out and moved to Paris by herself. She became a darkroom assistant to Man Ray and then began doing portraits of the artists around the 1920s Parisian art scene and became well known for doing so. She then met the already aging brilliant street photographer Eugene Atget, who had photographed a post-Haussmann Paris in beautiful de-populated dreamscapes in the years around the turn of the century. Abbott photographed him, and after his death in 1927 acquired his prints and negatives and spent the rest of her life tirelessly promoting him. In fact, were it not for Abbott we likely would have never heard of Atget at all.  

Abbott visited New York City in 1929, mainly to find a publisher for Atget’s work, but found the city inspiring and, much like Atget’s Paris from years earlier, in a state of flux. She decided to stay and then set about documenting the birth of the modern metropolis with her camera, which eventually became her 1937 book “Changing New York”.  She also became an important link between her old Paris artist friends and the new ones in NYC.

She went on to get Guggenheim grants, Federal Art Project grants and taught at the New School of Social Research. She traveled around the US doing more documentary projects, was concerned with urban planning, vocally critical of America’s “paleotechnic era” and shot a series of scientific photographs for physics schoolbooks via a relationship with MIT. 

These are only the highlights. She touched the photography world not just with her photography but also her influence in teaching, and just figuring out the biz... the art world biz, the business of things, how to do it all and keep it together. The biography on her by Julia Van Haaften is very well worth checking out and she has been and remains a big influence on me...

One year ago The Germ effectively shut down my book tour and in the ensuing months of social avoidance my vocal cords have completely atrophied.

However, I’ve been on a quarce daily regimen of saltwater gargles preparing for tomorrow when I’ll give a talk about my epoch-long stint as a photographer on 'Evenings With The Masters’, that’s Tuesday March 2.

George Nobechi of the Tokyo-based Nobechi Creative hosted some great photographers on the program last season and I'm honored to be featured on the upcoming Session 9 of season 2. These are live Zoom talks that last 60 to 90 minutes and are followed by a Q&A with the audience afterwards. If you’re going to sign up I’ve been told it’s best to sign up ahead of time.

Every dime of the money goes to charity and each photographer has chosen his/her own cause — I’ve chosen Community Action Nepal because I greatly enjoyed my time with the people I met there. I also chose it in memory of Doug Scott who I photographed for my book The Climbers and who started the charity decades ago to help the mountain people of Nepal.

Go to www.eveningswiththemasters.com for more details and to sign up.  I promise it won’t be purely photo geek talk. I’ll talk about the music/showbiz stuff as well as the round-the-world epic that became The Climbers book — also lots of travels, travails and maybe a few laughs. And you can ask me anything you want. 

Hope to see you tomorrow, March 2!

www.jimherrington.com

Ever had a machine gun pointed at your face and still not surrendered your exposed film to the art-destroying Third World airport X-Ray machine?

I’ve been invited to talk about my photography on 'Evenings With The Masters' on Tuesday March 2.

George Nobechi of the Tokyo-based Nobechi Creative hosted some great photographers on the program last season and I'm honored to be featured on the upcoming Session 9 of season 2. These are live Zoom talks that last 60 to 90 minutes and are followed by a Q&A with the audience afterwards. 

Every dime of the money goes to charity and each photographer has chosen his/her own cause — I’ve chosen Community Action Nepal because I greatly enjoyed my time with the people I met there. I also chose it in memory of Doug Scott who I photographed for my book 'The Climbers' and who started the charity decades ago to help the mountain people of Nepal.

Go to www.eveningswiththemasters.com for more details and to sign up. 

I promise it won’t be purely photo geek talk. I’ll talk about the music/showbiz stuff, the round-the-world epic that became The Climbers book — lots of travels, travails and maybe a few laughs. And you can ask me anything you want. Hope to see you March 2!

www.jimherrington.com

You won’t see this special Christmas pricing again, I promise. 

Dolly Parton - The Four Print Suite

If you’ve been holding out on getting a Dolly for yourself or someone else, this is as low as they will go, my four best-selling Dolly prints together in one package, click here:

https://jimherrington.bigcartel.com/product/dolly-parton-four-print-suite

Of course if you prefer you can still buy individual Dollys, as well as Willie, Jagger, Richards, Townes, Charlie, Petty, Cormac, Merle, Gillian, and many more — click around on the same link.

I’m very pleased to announce that I am now represented by the fine people at Morrison Hotel Gallery for all of my 40+ years of music photography, starting today. I’m quite excited about this new partnership. They represent all the biggies of the music photography world, alive and not, and I’m humbled and excited to be included amongst them. 

MHG have three galleries — New York City, West Hollywood and Maui. Check with them but I believe they’re currently allowing limited gallery visits by reservation during these times. If not, their website is the place to go, the link is down below.

Also, today would have been Tom Petty’s 70th birthday and I can’t tell you how much I miss having him on the planet. I’ve been going deep into my archives and found some seldom and even never before seen Petty photos that I’ve taken — some of them are now up on the MHG site.

Thanks for listening and happy bday TP. xo

Goodbye Sierra Nevada. Next stop on The Climbers book tour: #Krakow #Poland, December 6.

I’m teaching a photography workshop in Bishop, CA, “The Paris of Owens Valley”, on Nov. 2:

PORTRAITURE FOR UNDER A POUND with Jim Herrington


Jim Herrington’s one-day portraiture workshop will emphasize an approach that relies on using natural light and minimal gear. Herrington will demonstrate how he travels the world with a very small kit, often working in less-than-ideal locations and situations. Herrington believes less in overpowering the scenario with soft boxes and gear and more in having a sensitivity to your surroundings and finding creative, often simple solutions to taking good photographs. Here is a chance to learn firsthand how Herrington shot the photographs for his book The Climbers as well as his celebrity and musician portraits over a decades-long career.

To sign up go to https://www.theclimbersbook.com/…/20…/11/2/bishop-california - you'll be directed to the link.

Thanks once again to the fine people at #Adidas for your interest and support.

It’s more than a month away but if you read the link you’ll find out why I’m already getting excited for this one.

Also, I’ve been asked to teach a photography workshop while there and if you follow the AAC link that’s also on the link below you can find out how to sign up for it:

Goes without saying but I’m saying it anyway.

Wow, this just showed up in my email.

Here I am in 1998, 21 years ago, interviewing Glen Dawson, the first climber I photographed for what became The Climbers book two decades later. Look how bright eyed and bushy tailed I look. I had no idea then what this project would turn in to.

Glen had a very long, rich life. He began climbing in the Sierra Nevada in the 1920s and was one of the best California rock climbers of the era. He was on the first ascent of the East Face of Mt. Whitney in 1931 as well as numerous other first ascents in the Sierra. He also climbed in Mexico, Canada, Germany, Wales and Italy, all before World War 2. Then he went to the war where he was climbing and ski instructor for the 10th Mountain Division in Colorado and Italy. He earned a Bronze Star for combat in northern Italy.

His father opened Dawson’s Books in Los Angeles in 1905. After the war Glen dealt in antiquarian books through the family book shop.

Glen was born in 1912 and died in 2016 at 103 years of age.

Thanks Peter Orth for the photo. He went with me to Glen’s house in Pasadena that day. Glen was moving out and locking the door right after we left. He’d lived there for 57 years. His wife needed to live in a nursing home and he was moving with her.