Jim’s mother had struggled with her health for years and as
things seemed to get worse, he was finding it more difficult
to concentrate and decided to drop out of school. Jim spent
the next year or so bartending and navigating the punk rock
scene when, unfortunately, his mother passed away. “When
that hit me, I just like, kinda went off the rails and lost focus
of everything.” A year later, Jim also lost his father. Having
suffered two great losses in only a year’s time, he struggle to
maintain focus and notes that while bartending kept him
afloat, he would often just cruise around the streets of Philadelphia
on his skateboard aimlessly taking pictures. “I didn’t know
what I was doing,” Jim explained, “I was just shooting stuff
and would take it to the pharmacy to get it developed.” His
camera wasn’t of great quality, but fortunately for Jim, his
girlfriend at the time bought him a brand new camera for
Christmas. While at Drexel he had found photography
difficult noting he couldn’t get the technical side of it,
including the shutter speeds and chemistry. But during his
time off of school he had worked things out and taught
himself, hanging each picture developed at the pharmacy on
the wall of his bedroom. Thanks to a roommate, Jim’s fortune
began to change. One day Jim came home to find an empty
wall, and his roommate encouraging him to come to school
with him the next day. His roommate had showed his photos
to the Head of Photography at the Art Institute of Philadelphia.
“When I went there what happened was, I had already taken
art history and design and method courses, and I was using all
of this in my photography and not even realizing