James Martin (photographer)
James Martin is a San Francisco-based photographer, known for his razor-sharp eye and an unquenchable thirst for adventure.
A creative director, whose artistry and originality have given rise to a style of image-making that bridges the documentary and art worlds, bringing informative and exploratory photojournalism into the art world, his photographs stand on their own as impactful works of art with dynamic lines and strong form, punctuated with meaningful colors and textures.
James' career spans over two decades and has taken him to the furthest corners of the globe. A photojournalist and creative director with an edge, James has made a name for himself telling the stories of a changing world - documenting impactful technologies and the people behind them, most often through the world of environmental portraiture and photojournalism.
His long career spans the changes in photography itself, and he has additionally developed a reputation as a pioneer in the rethinking of imagery and how the use of artificial intelligence generated images, will impact the future of photojournalism and the making of art, while exploring new creative possibilities and pushing the boundaries of traditional photographic techniques.
Through his lens, James has captured the beauty and complexity of the world around us, revealing the intricacies and nuances of the modern world centered on California and Silicon Valley, covering the figureheads of the technology industry, including Apple’s Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai. His work has been featured in some of the world's most renowned publications, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, CNN, CBS News and Bloomberg News, and he has earned dozens of awards and accolades for his outstanding work as a photojournalist, but also in the fields of product and architectural photography.
As a photojournalist, James has covered stories including the clearing of landmines in Angola, healthcare development in Rwanda, access to sanitation in India, middle eastern refugee migration in Greece, robotic work inside the melted down Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, the clear-cutting of indigenous lands deep in the Brazilian Amazon, and the migrant crisis along the southern border of the United States and inside Mexico.
He has a rare gift for capturing the essence of his subjects along with the broader context, and his images are both striking and thought-provoking works of art.
He's not afraid to get his hands dirty or to push the limits of what's possible with modern digital tools and techniques. As deeply developed artificial intelligence has risen in importance, James Martin is recognized as a pioneering thinker in the field of AI-generated images, and is credited with coining the term 'aitography' (pronounced eye-tography) or 'aiography' (eye-ography) to describe photographic-like images that are not created with the traditional digital photography means, but rather AI-assisted creations.
In a world where conformity and conventionality are the norm, James Martin's unyielding creativity and uncompromising vision have set him apart, making him one of the most interesting photographers of our time. He has made a name for himself as a photojournalist and creative director with an edge. His creativity and sense of adventure is a testament to the power of the human spirit, and a reminder of the boundless possibilities of the imagination.