Jim Herrington

At 13 years old, Jim Herrington photographed Benny Goodman with his new 35mm camera. More recently, he shot Dolly Parton and the latest album cover for The Black Keys. In the 40-plus years between, Herrington has traveled throughout the US and internationally documenting culture that is either straight from the source or deeply influenced by the roots of American music — rock & roll, blues, country, folk, jazz and their many crossbred amalgamations. His portraits of musicians, actors, authors, and other public figures – including The Rolling Stones, Dolly Parton, Tom Petty, Morgan Freeman, Cormac McCarthy, Sir Ian McKellen, Jerry Lee Lewis and Willie Nelson – have appeared in the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and The New York Times, et al, since the 1980s.

In the mid-1990s, unbeknownst to the music and magazine worlds, Herrington quietly began a side project. While circling the globe over the next twenty years, he created a portrait series of early-to-mid 20th century mountain climbing legends. These determined men and women were at the cutting edge of an activity mostly unknown to the public, using primitive gear along with their considerable wits, talent, and fortitude to climb unscaled peaks in the far-flung ranges. Herrington’s effort resulted in his first book, The Climbers, a collection of sixty black-and-white portraits that document these rugged individualists today. Using images and words, Herrington captures their humanity, obsession and intellect and to craft an intimate study of what it means to truly live on the edge — and what it means to grow old.

The Climbers received both the Grand Prize and the Mountaineering History awards at the 2017 Banff Film & Book Festival, with a subsequent years-long book tour and exhibitions across Europe, North America and Asia. The Italian edition of The Climbers was published in Italy in December 2023.

His photography has been exhibited internationally and is in numerous private collections.