James
Autery

James Autery grew up in a small town in the Mojave Desert in California. He was given a 35mm film camera by a family friend at the age of 16. He used it to explore the vast desert surrounding his hometown, photographing hermits, hitch-hikers, travelers, broad desert expanses, abandoned mines and buildings, driving around with a beater Datsun, sometimes getting stuck or breaking down and having to hitch-hike home.

He became obsessed with printing in the darkroom, night after night, often forgoing sleep, for years. Following in the tradition of Magnum photography, he sought to be a photojournalist. Attending the University of Missouri-Columbia to get in to the School of Photojournalism, he began his own self-assigned projects, including train-hoppers, a machinist in the Mojave Desert, a Korean-American family, and more recently, children with Autism, and communities in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Now based in New York, his work is evolving into filmmaking and video art, but also continues working as a freelance photographer. His work has been published with TIME Magazine, Travel+Leisure, Entityy Magazine, and Upstate Diary, among other publications. He was a finalist in the Gordon Parks International Photo Competition of 2006. He has shown both solo shows and group shows in galleries such as the Minneapolis Photo Center, Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, and the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, NY.