James Quine

Artist Statement

I have played music since childhood, which I think has a lot to do with my way of looking at the world... so later on, when I discovered photography, it was natural for me to adopt an approach that was analogous to my music, which relies heavily on improvisation and spontaneity. Truth is often revealed to the camera in ways that cannot be anticipated or imagined, so I try to approach a subject with an open mind and without preconceptions, reacting to events emotionally and intuitively, welcoming surprises and embracing the element of chance.

Also central to my photography is a committed belief in the power of color as a means of expressing the intangible. My aim is to create a feeling... an enduring dream that reveals the magic in commonplace events. If I succeed, the image will tell a story that, like color... or music, transcends the limits of language and can only be experienced.

Artist Biography

James Quine is a freelance photographer based in Florida. He began photographing Latin America in 1980 during a trip to several Caribbean countries preparing photographs for a book on Spanish colonial archaeology. He has since traveled and photographed extensively throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America and Mexico. The resulting images, which represent Quine's personal work, are an expression of his long-standing fascination with Latin American music, language and culture.

Quine's images of Cuba are part of an ongoing project that has taken him on numerous visits to the country since 1999. They have been exhibited in museums and featured in a variety of publications. Shared Vision, a recent photographic project documenting Baracoa, Cuba, for which Quine acted as director and participating photographer, was partially funded by a grant awarded from the National Endowment for the Arts.