Jim Cox

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have been in love with creating photographs since the mid 1970s. It is an on again, off again love affair. My first 35 mm was a Yashica IC Rangefinder that I purchased at a pawn shop. It gave me the sensation of a new lover at a seedy hotel, though I hadn't had a real lover at that time. My first real SLR was a virgin Canon AE-1. I still have both of these cameras and every camera purchased since. Partially because I don't like to get rid of certain things in general, but specifically I don't like to get rid of any of my photography equipment, like old love letters. Photography, like new love is magical.

Every artist, everyone, to at least some extent is influenced by one or more people they know, have seen their work, read about, etc. I am not a fanatic of any one photographer's work. Instead, I appreciate many different photographers' visions. For example Helmut Newton and André Kertész are photographers who I admire. They are two very different photographers who share mostly the label of photographer (and death) in common. That is how different my body of work can be. We are taught as artists that buyers, employers, viewers want a consistent look. They want to view a piece of work and say, "Jim Cox was obviously the photographer." If one looks at my work in categories, I believe I have a unified theme. If one looks at it as a whole, then one may be lost in the various subject matters of which I like to photograph.

Although at times the whole may seem unrelated, the images I like the most are the ones that I find to be humorous or ironic and occurring by accident. Or I like an angle or view of a subject that not every other photographer is currently doing. That is my unifying force. In the final analysis I hope my work reflects things others may not see, but make the viewer think, "Oh!"