The entity known as James McClean was incarnated upon this Earth in August of 1966, first son of a printer in North Jersey, USA. At an early age of development were his artistic glands stimulated, most impressively by the paintings of Salvador Dali as seen in books of his father’s library. After an unusually dark period of teenage angst the young artist took to the highway by thumb after high school to see what the world has to offer. The road system ends in Alaska, and there James camped the summer of ’85 along a stretch of beach, writing poems and selling watercolours and candles to tourists. The long strange trip later took James to New Mexico where he halted for ten years, enraptured by the high desert light and completing undergraduate studies in History of Photography and European Archaeology at the University of New Mexico. During this period James realised a dream of creating holograms and exhibited one of his works in a juried exhibition at the Holos Gallery in San Francisco in 1990, as well as showing photographs at several other juried shows at his university art gallery. James joined the U.S. Navy Reserve in 1988 to enable wider travels and had the great blessing to spend several summers in Europe wandering the landscape with his cameras between 1987 and 1997.
Studies of aerial photography and computer cartography led to a fascination with the discovery of archaeological sites by remote sensing methods. This fascination become a career move, bringing James to Tallahassee to complete a Masters degree in Underwater Archaeology at Florida State University. Aside from a year long contract as photographer for the National Park Service’s Southeast Archeological Center to document museum collections, this was a long pause from photography. During this time James studied environmental archaeology in 1999 at Umeå University in Sweden and passed 2001 in Germany excavating Stone Age sites in the Baltic Sea. Subsequent employment as remote sensing data analyst for the Florida Geological Survey from 2002 to 2005 gave James a thorough grounding in digital imaging technology, and in late 2004 James acquired his first professional digital camera and the seeds of inspiration were once again sewn in his Mind. It was sometime during this period that James actualised the True Nature of Reality, ie that all Being is Light and his Soul was detached from his corporeal form and held in stasis in a piece of Nikkor glass, where it resides to this day, the better to interpret the world of real things around him in accordance with the Real World of Ideas within.
A year at Lively Technical Institute studying Commercial Photography provided James with the elements of an education which filled in the gaping holes left from his art school education, namely how to pay the bills. In February 2006 James was awarded several Addy Awards for excellence in Advertising Photography, taking Silver, Gold and Best in Show prizes in the student category at the local level, and a Gold award for the Southeast region allowing him to represent Tallahassee’s Lively Tech at the national level. It was also in early 2006 that James received the blessing of studio space in Tallahassee’s Rail Road Square artist community, where upon he commenced touring the world in search of stimulation for his artistic glands. A long anticipated two month sojourn to Egypt to photograph the Total Eclipse of the Sun was then followed by a long overdue return to Alaska, commencing with a good several months long wander followed by a magical winter spent photographing the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. You can follow James’ travels at his web site, http://www.McCleanImageStudio
James’ work can best be described as a visual exploration of Humankind’s awkward Love/Hate relationship with Mother Nature. While some look to the beauty of the natural landscape James prefers a wider lens to bring into focus the telephone wires and parked cars that now define our modern landscape. Wilderness is scarcer and scarcer to find, urban blight grows like a cancer across the land and fresh air and clean water will soon no longer be just a luxury for the rich, but may not be available at any price with our current rates of conspicuous consumption. Photographs are for James mirrors reflecting inner light toward other beings, magic mirrors which hold Thoughts and Memories fast for future generations to understand the world of Ideas and Images that shaped this current generation in which we live.
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