Rangefinder Magazine
July 2006

Jim Herrington by Larry Singer
Soul Man

Hank Williams III, Nashville, TN, 1998	Mose Allison, singer/pianist, Milwaukee, WI, 2004

“The only three real sports,” said Ernest Hemingway, “are bullfighting, car racing and mountain climbing. All the others are mere games.”

For Milwaukee photojournalist Jim Herrington, however, his passion for climbing mountains and capturing pioneer climbers on film seriously transcends mere sport.

Herrington has also developed a longterm photographic love affair with music and the people who make it. From the Rolling Stones to Willie Nelson, Jim Herrington has focused on their faces and captured their souls.

As for Herrington’s own immortal soul, photography began to take possession of it before Jim reached his 11th birthday. “My father collected old Life magazines,” Herrington says. “I was maybe 10 years old, and it dawned on me that the people who took these pictures were getting to travel around the world and see great people, places and things. It showed me a way to explore the world and be creative at the same time.”

Willie Nelson, singer/songwriter/guitarist, in his bus, Beverly Hills, CA, 2004	Hotel/Sunset Blvd., self-portrait, Hollywood, CA, 2002

It was his father’s passion for music that brought Jim and a jazz legend together for an eventful photographic meeting. “I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, and my dad and I went to see Benny Goodman when he came through town,” Herrington explains.

“I had cameras, I guess, since I was nine or 10, but this was the first time I got results back that were very different than pictures of the dog. The subject matter really moved me. It felt like artistic reportage, which is what I do.”

Although Herrington was just 13 when he captured Goodman on film, that image is still prominently displayed on his website. Capturing Goodman may have hooked Herrington on photography, but it was the first payday for his photographic services that reeled him in.

“Eileen Fulton, who was a soap opera star, came to town for a grand opening of an appliance store,” Herrington recalls. “I got paid by a guy who managed this little mall to come and take pictures of her. That was my first paying job. I think I got like 50 bucks, which seemed huge because it was as much as I would make mowing 20 yards.

“I started devouring books about all the great photographic masters like Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon. I went to a photography school for a while in 1981, but I knew I had to get out of North Carolina. I really wanted to move to either Los Angeles or New York, so I choose L.A. and took off.

“When I left for Los Angeles, I had a list of photographers I thought were pretty great who I could possibly work for. So I went out there and was determined to learn that way,” Herrington says. “I banged on all their doors and wound up working for all of them.

Dolly Parton, singer, songwriter, Nashville, TN, 1997

“The first job I got was with Tom Consilvio,” he continues, “who ran a photo lab and printed all of Garry Winogrand’s photographs. This was fantastic, because Garry was one of my biggest heroes. Winogrand had recently died, and we got thousands of unprocessed rolls of film from his widow’s house. I was making less than minimum wage, but when I was making the contact sheets, I was the first person to see Winogrand’s images come up in a tray.”

The next name on Herrington’s list was superstar celebrity photographer and filmmaker Moshe Brakha. “He was a fantastic photographer,” Herrington says, “When I went to work for him, he was already well known. He had shot album covers and assignments for Interview magazine. His studio was in a little apartment, and he made these incredibly beautiful prints in these little trays in a little room, and then washed them in a sink. I’m still blown away by the quality of prints he got under those conditions.”

Maps to the Top

One of the things Herrington learned from all of his mentors was the route each took to the top of the profession. “They all really work their asses off,” Herrington explains. “They all take their work very seriously, and they’re married to what they do. I also think there’s a buzz factor these people understand and have a handle on.”

Ron Wood, guitarist for Rolling Stones, Photographed at his home in Ireland, 1996

Knowing what it takes to be successful, Herrington methodically made the transition from assistant to the guy with his name under the pictures. “Getting out on my own,” he says, “was like cutting the umbilical cord with a blunt stick. It was not an immediate process. I was always chasing jobs down, even while I was assisting people kind enough to let me use their cameras, lights and studios. I kept building my portfolio. Eventually I could step away and go freelance, but when I moved to Nashville, that’s when things really cemented. I got a body of work together, and I started narrowing in on these aging hillbilly guys, the legends.”

Herrington, now 41, has lived and worked around the world, shooting for a laundry list of publications, including GQ, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Mojo magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. For Gibson guitars, Herrington shot an ad featuring the guitar player for the Mavericks, Nick Cain. He shot Waylon Jennings and Johnny Paycheck for Rolling Stone.

The magazine that Herrington loves working for the most, however, is an alternative music magazine called No Depression. “The editor and I are very close,” Herrington says, “and he gives me wonderful stories featuring these fantastic, country hillbilly, roots musicians. In fact, my Willie Nelson album cover came to me though my relationship with No Depression.”

Dolly and Keith

“I really enjoyed Dolly Parton’s incredible charm and intelligence,” Herrington says, describing one of his more pleasantly memorable assignments. “She’s the nicest, sweetest person I’ve ever met. She’s like a saint, the way she makes everyone around her feel so good.”

Brad Washburn, climber, pilot, photographer, explorer, Boston, MA, 2002

Herrington also admits to a profound respect and affection for Keith Richards.

“He was extremely kind and obviously very photogenic,” Herrington says. “He’s much more hilarious than I think he’s depicted. You see him on these little documentaries, and it’s usually after he’s had a gallon of whiskey. He’s actually very well spoken, intelligent and extremely witty.”

Herrington started climbing in the 1970s in North Carolina and continued climbing and scaling more formidable peaks in the Sierra Nevadas in the ’80s. “I’ve always had a soft spot for explorers and exploring,” Herrington explains, “so mountain climbing just seemed like a wonderful thing to do.

“When I moved to Nashville in the 1990s,” Herrington says, “I started getting a reputation as the guy who shoots old climbers.”

Because of that reputation, it is not surprising that Herrington was chosen by National Geographic to shoot Jim Whitaker, the first American to climb Mt. Everest.

Over the years, shooting under an extremely wide range of climate conditions, Herrington admits to having a less-thanenthusiastic attitude towards his eclectic collection of camera gear.

Merle Haggard, singer/songwriter, Temecula, CA, 2000

“I find all cameras pretty limiting and a bit of a bother,” he says, “because everything’s going to do something well, and everything’s going to do something really poorly. I’m always going through the cabinet and trying to find the one that’s going to work best.

“I’ve started taking a very small press camera into the back country of the Sierras on these weeklong ski tours. This is slightly insane because when you’re cutting handles off of toothbrushes to save weight, taking a 4x5 with all the film and lenses is crazy, but the results have been magnificent.”

Herrington also admits to a strong fondness for his 8x10 camera, a Leica M6, a Hasselblad, a Fujifilm 6x9 and his Nikon gear.

In a world of creative, interactive websites, Herrington’s could easily make the top 10 list. Visitors access Herrington’s images as each moves vertically, like a slot machine with three spinning wheels. White dots near captions lead visitors deeper into each subject.

Benny Goodman, Charlotte, NC, 1977

“Over the course of a couple years I had various people attempt to make a website for me, but I was always very disappointed with the results,” Herrington explains. “I was very picky about the feel of what I desired. I wanted as few bells and whistles as possible on the site. I wanted it very clean, and I wanted a person to be able to get deep down in the bowels of the site and back out again with the fewest amount of clicks. I wanted something that looked very different from anything I had seen, and I wanted it to start cinematically. Frank Ullenberg, a designer in Milwaukee, helped with the design. Ty Lettau, who now works for Macromedia in San Francisco, did the programming and helped with the design as well. We worked on and off with the site for about two or three months, and it went live this summer.”

After long exposure to A-list photographers, music legends and the occasional mountain blizzard, Jim Herrington’s philosophy of photography basically boils down to a dozen short words. “I just stay out of the way,” he says, “and let the subject speak.”

To see more of Jim Herrington’s work or to contact him, visit www.jim herrington.com.

Larry Singer is a writer and photographer for the Daily Journal and Daily Messenger newspapers in Seneca, South Carolina. Some of his award-winning images can be seen at homepage.mac.com/larry singer. His newspaper photographs can also be seen at www.dailyjm.com.