Each element of James W. Bailey’s photographic process; the cameras, the subject matter, the frame of
the composition, the development process, and the post-development manipulation, is an entirely conscious
artistic decision. Beginning with his choice of medium, Bailey uses photography in order to “reach out to
someone in an artist’s capacity and to communicate with him or her in a vanishing moment of time.” By using
imperfect, and at times, damaged cameras and lenses, Bailey captures images of New Orleans. His “Drive By
Shootings” series, for example, is a personal statement on the issue of street violence in the city. Bailey
wanted to explore the context within street violence as well as to reveal the faces of the victims that are
otherwise portrayed as faceless, nameless nobodies by the media.  Bailey's compositional technique is one of
improvisation and immediacy, a shoot-from the-hip approach.  Once his images have been captured, the artist's
favorite part of the process is his own established technique of post-development editing called "Rough Edge
Photography."  In this process, which Bailey was inspired by at the age of 11 when he rescued a box of charred
photographs from a burning farmhouse, he burns, tears, melts, and scars the 35 mm black and white film
negatives. Because the manipulation is performed onto the chemically developed negative, which destroys the
negative, the images cannot be reproduced, rendering each image unique.  "Rough Edge Photography" is Bailey's
attempt at challenging conventional artistic mediums and stretching the possibilities of photography.

James W. Bailey is an experimental artist, photographer and imagist writer from Mississippi. His art focus
includes Littoral Art projects that explore the fleeting moments of cross-cultural communicative intersections;
film projects, including the short film, Talking Smack; “Wind Painting”, a unique naturalistic art practice inspired
by the vanishing Southern African-American cultural tradition of the Bottle Tree; street photography centered
on the hidden cultural edges of inner city New Orleans life; and “Rough Edge Photography”, a hard-edge non-
digital photographic style that celebrates the death of 35mm film through the burning, tearing, slashing and
violent manipulation of chemically developed negatives and prints.

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Artist website: http://jameswbailey.artroof.com/