James Bacchi

For more than four decades, James Bacchi has occupied a distinctive place in the contemporary art world—as a gallerist, curator, juror, art consultant, collaborator and photographer. His ongoing photographic series #inthesky brings those decades of looking at art into a deeply personal visual practice.

A Palm Springs–based iPhoneographer, Bacchi began #inthesky in 2015 as an exploration of the volatile relationship between the sky and the urban landscape. Working spontaneously and exclusively with an iPhone, he captures fleeting intersections of architecture, signage, geometry, light and sky—transforming fragments of the everyday city into striking black-and-white compositions.

The cities themselves become his muses. From New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Palm Springs to Paris and Budapest, Bacchi searches for the instant when the built environment collides with the openness above it. Buildings divide expanses of sky; palm trees, utility lines and architectural forms interrupt the horizon. Within these encounters, strength and vulnerability, permanence and impermanence exist simultaneously.

Bacchi’s photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are held in private, corporate and museum collections. In 2019, the Museo Italo Americano in San Francisco acquired his work for its Permanent Collection. His photography has been featured by BBC Culture, VOGUE Spain, FRAMES Magazine, BNW Magazine, The App Whisperer, Only Mobile Art Magazine, SHOUTOUT LA and Manhattan Arts International, among others.

His work has been recognized with a 2021 Urban Photo Award, an Honorable Mention for the Sheridan Prize for Art, and a 2020 Independent Arts and Media Grant.

Bacchi’s photographic practice is inseparable from his long career on the other side of the exhibition wall. His experience as a curator and juror, including more than two decades of involvement with Art for AIDS and multiple appointments as a juror for the Mobile Photo Awards, has shaped an instinctive understanding of composition, negative space and the ability of a single image to transform the familiar.

Yet #inthesky remains fundamentally immediate. There are no elaborate sets and no conventional photographic apparatus separating Bacchi from the moment. There is simply the iPhone, the city, the sky—and the recognition that an extraordinary image may exist for only an instant before disappearing.

IN THE SKY, published by Baroque Medusa Media, brings together selected photographs from this continuing body of work—a visual journey across cities, years and changing horizons.

For James Bacchi, the subject remains the place where the constructed world ends—and the infinite begins.

 

Project Statement

I am drawn to the moment when something ordinary becomes unfamiliar—a building reduced to a shape, a palm tree suspended against open space, a sign or architectural fragment suddenly separated from its intended purpose. It is within these intersections that I find the tension that defines my work.

IN THE SKY explores the visual dialogue between the constructed and the infinite. I am interested in the way solid forms interrupt open space, how permanence confronts something inherently transient, and how a carefully framed moment can hold these opposing forces in an unexpected equilibrium.

I began the series in San Francisco in 2015, and it has continued through Palm Springs, New York, Las Vegas, Rome, Venice, Paris and Budapest. Each place has its own sky and architectural vocabulary, yet I approach them in much the same way—not in search of landmarks or recognizable views, but of unexpected relationships between form and space.

Working with an iPhone is essential to that process. Its immediacy allows me to respond instinctively, without interrupting the moment with preparation or equipment. Through framing, perspective and negative space, I isolate fragments of the everyday and remove them from their familiar context. What remains can hover somewhere between photography and abstraction.

Working in black and white further distills these relationships. Form, line, light and shadow become more pronounced, while familiar objects become less literal. The photograph is no longer simply about what is depicted, but about the visual forces operating within the frame.

Ultimately, IN THE SKY is an ongoing study of tension—between structure and openness, permanence and impermanence, order and unpredictability. I am interested in that brief instant when these opposing forces occupy the same frame and something familiar is transformed.