Hello and welcome to my online art portfolio. I’m Jim Darski and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up in Poland and moved to the U.S. in the 1990s. I work as a motion designer, but I also studied dance, fine art, photography, and later I focused on film. Art has been present in my life since before I even remember, for both my parents were visual artists. Lately I haven’t been as active in all these art areas as I wish, but still over the years I was able to produce some work, especially in photography.
Photography and me
It all started in my father’s darkroom. I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, and my older brother had an extra photo camera he was not using anymore. So I took some photos with it, and since my dad had a darkroom, I developed my photos after getting precise instructions on how to do it. Wow, what an incredible discovery that was for me to see the images slowly appearing on photographic paper, the images I captured myself a few days prior. And since then, photography has accompanied me through my life. Whatever else I was doing, photography was always there, to capture my life, my family, my friends, the places I go to… And to discover art, composition, light, and shadow.
My photographs presented on this website are organized into different categories: Early Digital Photos, Composition Studies, and Travel Photography. Most of them are from around the San Francisco Bay Area where I moved in the early 2000s. But the travel section includes some other places I visited as well. I also love photographing people. But I don’t have many chances to do so, and due to permissions, it is difficult to post it. But if I’m able to gather enough interesting images, I may create a section for that as well.
I also have an Instagram photo collection which I call: “In Search of Aesthetics”. At first, it was my experiment to see if it is possible to take and post photos using a mobile phone. I continued that over the years (well, I did not get much of the following - haha) and posted all together 100 images. And I decided to switch recently to a more photography-dedicated platform called Glass, where I continue my “Search”. In a way, “In Search of Aesthetics” can sum up my overall approach to photography. For whether I take pictures of landscapes, people, or concentrate more on abstract compositions, to me it’s all the same in the sense that I want to discover some aesthetics, some positive visual values, in the world around me, and capture them using a photo camera. For that reason, a well-composed travel or architectural photo is as important as a street photography or an abstract - seemingly more artistic photo, or a portrait of a person. For in each case, even though there is a different approach, the effort to compose, to find the right balance, to capture the moment, and the feeling, that effort is the same. And it is “a search” because I constantly learn, or relearn, about technical aspects of photography, my skills, about myself, and how to see the world. And that’s what photography is for me.