As kids, James Evans and his younger brothers grew up in their mom’s home in New Jersey and then Philadelphia, and he dreamed of being a machinist. But in the mid-seventies, after a friend in high school sold him a 35mm camera on the cheap, he started hanging around a drag-racing track near his mom’s house and taking pictures to sell to the local sports page. For no reason he can recall, at age 26 he got into his car immediately after the Phillies won the 1980 World Series and landed in Corpus Christi, where he rented a darkroom and became friends with Andrew Eccles, a young photographer with a stronger sense of direction. James stayed in Corpus, envisioning a smaller career shooting weddings and school pictures. A chance to help Eccles on a portrait Annie Leibovitz was taking of San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros for Vanity Fair in 1984 finally woke him up. It was his first look at the big leagues, and he didn't see Leibovitz do anything he couldn't do. Within a few weeks he was assisting Austin commercial photographer Tomás Pantin, learning how to print to Pantin’s exacting standards during fourteen-hour days in the darkroom. Evans has been photographing the landscape and people of the Big Bend since 1988. His first book, Big Bend Pictures, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2003. His work has appeared in many national magazines and can be found in collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Beaumont Museum of Art, the Art Museum of South Texas, the El Paso Museum of Art, and the Wittliff, as well as in many private collections.
SOURCE “Chasing Shadows” by John Spong in Texas Monthly, March 2003, James Evans Gallery www.jevansgallery.com