Jim Rolon

I take portraits and I have been doing so for a long time. My base is in Sydney Australia.

The concern or focus of my work is the uniqueness of the individual; however the majority of almost four decades of photographing has been spent working commercially.

Nearly all of my jobs have been for multinational advertising agencies, graphic designers and magazine editorial. The assignments have been in Australia, the United States, the Middle East and in Asia. Portrait commissions have included books, CD covers plus a few exhibitions.

Now I photograph many different things, especially when I travel.

My photographs, over 170 images, have been acquired by the National Library of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Casula NSW (Sydney) for their permanent collections.

I tell stories to remember the past, or at least to keep from forgetting it. Stories entertain and connect us.

When you have a camera and photograph for many years, you begin in one place with one outlook and end up in another. I know this well because I have made my living photographing as a commercial artist for a long time. Although a simple process, working photographers intuitively travel to where their art evolves. In other words photographers go to where the assignments are. The art of photography is propelled by emotional and intellectual wanderings. In their creative travelings, the photographer is the passenger.

The result of taking portrait photographs over and over again, for many years, was that I became it and it became me. I hold or use my cameras as easily as drinking from a glass. Visualization is as instinctual as listening.

I am inclined to look at a face and search out the eyes, the facial structure (and what it means to me), while evaluating the relationships between the surface planes of the face, in relation to other surface planes in the immediate space of the person’s environment.

My passion for photography began in New York City... or at least in its metropolitan area.

I lived adjacent to the Manhattan Bridge.

Shooting Polaroid after Polaroid is how I developed my eye (for good composition) so many years ago.

Well, that's where I came from.  

I've lived on the bottom of the world for almost four decades.