Captured
By Jason Frye
O
wing to Wilmington’s stature as a major American film-making capital, famous faces are a fairly common sight around the Port City. As indeed they are — and have been for more than three decades — through the intimate camera lens of James “Jim” Bridges, one of Wilmington’s most celebrated still photographers. Bridges started as a sound transfer engineer and then became a dailies projectionist for Dino de Laurentiis Studios in the mid-1980s and snapped his first one set photograph of iconic character actor Dennis Hopper during the filming of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet in 1985. To say the least, the photograph was a life changer for Jim Bridges, Bridges, opening a new avenue for extraorself portrait, 2013 dinary talents. When Salt magazine contacted Bridges to ask if we might politely probe behind his camera a bit to learn about his life and work, and to publish a series of his most notable celebrity photographs currently available in limited signed print editions designed to raise funds for the acclaimed Full Belly Project, he quickly agreed but carefully noted: “I would really only do this because of my friend Jock Brandis.” Brandis, of course, is the force behind the Full Belly Project, the pioneering nonprofit organization that designs and distributes vital income-generating agricultural devices to the poorest developing nations. “It’s the very least I can do,” Bridges added. We couldn’t agree more. The extraordinary images speak intimately for themselves. And so does the man behind them.
The First Time I Shot a Man
Dennis Hopper on the Dennis Hopper on the set of , set of Blue Velvet, Wilmington, 1985 Wilmington, 1985
The Art & Soul of Wilmington
“I shot him up close, from about seven feet away,” says Bridges of Dennis Hopper. “He didn’t even know it.” When Bridges started working for Dino de Laurentiis, he carried a still camera with him every day; as a photographer by training (he holds a master’s from Appalachian State University in audio video specialties) and inclination, how could he do anything but? “I knew I wanted to shoot some of the actors and actresses I worked with, but I was nervous about it for a while,” he admits. “One day, David Lynch and Kyle MacLachlan were in the office where I was transferring sound and they were admiring some of my photos I had hanging around, so I asked David if I could come out to the set and shoot. He said yes, so, a couple of days later, I went.” Bridges was a longtime fan of Dennis Hopper and knew immediately that Hopper would be the perfect first subject. “I just had to find the right time to get in there. I watched them shoot a bit, reset, shoot some more, then they had kind of a long break, so I made my move.”
September 2013 •
Salt
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