Jim Alexander

JIM ALEXANDER

Jim Alexander (American, b. 1935) is an award-winning documentary photographer who has spent almost sixty years refining what he calls the art of documentary photography. A photojournalist, teacher, activist, media consultant and entrepreneur, Alexander has amassed an impressive collection of images of Black culture and human rights photographs.

He is a 2021 Art and Social Justice Fellow at Emory University and received the 2021 Ebon Dooley Art and Social Justice, Lifetime Contribution award. He received a 2017 Jus Blues Music Foundation Humanitarian Award, for his 50+ years of documenting Black music. Alexander is a 2006 inductee into The History Makers and in 1995 when the city of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs began its annual "Master Artist" program, Jim Alexander was the first artist chosen, "for his contribution to Atlanta and the world". Alexander started taking photographs in 1952 at the age of 17 in the U.S. Navy, at a time when photography was not yet considered broadly as art. He had his first exhibit 16 years later in 1968, the same year he graduated from the New York Institute of Photography with a degree in commercial photography. It was also the same year that he met, and became friends with Gordon Parks.

Since that time, Alexander has had over sixty solo exhibits and taught photography at Yale University and five other colleges, was photographer in residence at Atlanta's Neighborhood Arts Center for four years, and spent five years as photographer in residence at Clark Atlanta University. His work is in numerous major collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Georgia (MOCA, GA), Stuart A. Rose MARBL Collection at Emory University, Paul R Jones Collection, Clark Atlanta University Galleries Collection, Atlanta University Center Library Collection, Hammonds House Museum Collection Harvey B. Gantt Center Art Collection, Visual Arts Museum of Lagrange College Collection, Hartsfield/Jackson Atlanta Airport Collection and the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American History and Culture.