Jim McHugh is a widely acclaimed portrait, lifestyle and fine art photographer. He has created award winning portraits of Samuel L. Jackson, Clint Eastwood, and Sir. Anthony Hopkins. A unique series of environmental portraits by Jim McHugh has appeared on the covers of Architectural Digest. This series includes Candice Bergen, Tina Turner, Wynona Rider, Kelsey Grammer, Sen. and Mrs. John McCain, and Anjelica Huston.
McHugh has published several books on Contemporary Art and Artists, including, “California Painters: New Work” and ”The Art of Light and Space”. His artist’s portraits of David Hockney, Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis among others are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis. McHugh had his first one man show at the James Corcoran Gallery in Los Angeles in 1984. “Artists’ Portraits” was a comprehensive photographic survey of the Los Angeles artist world. His photograph of David Hockney was the portrait used by the George Pompidou Centre in Paris for their grand reopening. Another Hockney portrait was recently acquired by The National Portrait Gallery in London.
An alumni of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Jim is one of the original Contributing Photographers to People Magazine, where he started his work during the magazine’s very beginnings in the mid 1970s. Jim worked with the Grammy Awards for a decade creating “The Grammy Image Project” a series of unique celebrity images and a traveling exhibition that chronicled the history of contemporary music. Just a few of the musical legends included are Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Tony Bennett, Sheryl Crow, U2, Elton John, Tina Turner and BB King.
In the past few years Jim has dedicated much of his time to photographing the urban ‘built environment’ as a “vanishing landscape.” These evocative architectural Polaroid photographs have been exhibited at Louis Stern Fine Arts and the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. They have also been shown at Acte 2 Gallery in Paris. Ten images are included in the Polaroid Permanent Collection. In 2004 Jim won Graphis Photography Award for Architecture with his unique image of architect Albert Frey’s mid-century “Filling Station in Palm Springs.” Jim also received first prize from the International Photography Awards in 2004 for his images of Los Angeles.
Jim’s special interest is the combining of traditional and digital techniques to create fine art prints. He is director of the annual juried exhibition “Camera Works” for the APA-Los Angeles and serves on the Board’s Copyright Committee. Jim McHugh lives in Los Angeles with his wife Johnna and daughter Chloe.
Recent Awards:
• United Nations IPC Professional Photography Leadership Award 2011
• Prix de la Photographie Paris 1st Prize for Fine Art Portraiture 2007
• International Photography Awards 1st Prize Fine Art 2008
• International Photography Awards 1st Prize Landscape 2008
• Best of Show selected by Anthony Bannon George Eastman House, Rochester 2008