James Baker
At age 12, Baker was shown how to develop black and white film by his father, an artist and teacher. The process captivated him. Throughout his teenage years, he journaled his interests in geography, geology and weather by "collecting" photographs on his daily walks in the New England woods and along the coast. While majoring in Meteorology as an undergraduate, he realized his core interest was photography. He began taking photography classes and later attended graduate school at Rhode Island School of Design where he studied with Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan and visiting faculty Minor White and Lisette Model. In 1975, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography. From there, he went on to work as Director of Anderson Ranch Arts Center, where he worked for over two decades, before becoming Director of Pilchuck Glass School. Throughout his career, Baker continued photographing the natural landscape, at first exploring New England and Canadian Maritime Provinces, and then traveling extensively to Mexico, across the Intermountain West and through the Canadian Rockies, and more recently, the Pacific Northwest. Using primarily a 4 x 5" field view camera, he worked with black and white negative film, and in the 1980's included color negative and transparency film. Recently he has begun to use a digital camera. His printing methods have evolved through making silver, dye transfer, Type C and Cibachrome prints to more recently scanning his film images and making digital prints or working directly with digital camera files.