ABOUT MARK JAMES
Mark James is a Colorado-based photographer whose black-and-white landscape work, created exclusively with a pinhole camera, stands as one of the most comprehensive bodies of its kind. Since 1995, when he began as an artist-in-residence at Rocky Mountain National Park, James has produced a very comprehensive collection of pinhole landscapes that broadly covers the portion of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Using the most elemental photographic tool—a pinhole camera—James embraces a slow, deliberate process that strips away modern conventions in favor of timeless, meditative images.
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In 1987, James founded and directed Illustrated Light, an influential gallery devoted to black-and-white photography. Under his direction, the gallery attracted a membership of fifty respected photographers, becoming a regional hub for fine art photography, as well as the American West. Illustrated Light caught the attention of Hal Gould, owner of the Camera Obscura Gallery in Denver. Hal provided curatorial assistance as well as assembling exhibits on loan. James relinquished control of the gallery in 1995 to pursue his pinhole landscape work full-time.
James’s most significant exhibition to date was Remnants of the West: Edward Curtis and Mark James at the Dubuque Museum of Art in 2017. His photographs were shown alongside twenty original photogravures by Edward S. Curtis, offering a compelling dialogue between past and present visions of the American West. Photo historian George Slade explored this pairing in a public lecture titled “Time Capsules and Anachronism.”
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In 2017, James began a three-year photographic study of Pikes Peak and his ancestor, Edwin James, culminating in 2020 with a bicentennial commemoration on the summit—exactly 200 years to the day after his ancestor Edwin James made the first documented ascent. Edwin, a botanist on the Long Expedition, also discovered and named the Rocky Mountain blue columbine, later adopted as Colorado’s state flower.
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James continues to explore landscape and history through the uniquely demanding and contemplative art of pinhole photography, a process that presents inherent challenges, including the absence of a viewfinder and an infinite depth-of-field that requires careful control of composition, timing, and light.
