James Lucien Ashurst Austin was born in Melbourne, Australia, the eldest son of Lloyd James Austin and of Jeanne-Françoise. He is the older brother of the late Colin Austin, the scholar of ancient Greek. After studying architecture and fine art at Jesus College, Cambridge, he continued his education at the Courtauld Institute, London. He then travelled widely in France and Italy as a freelance photographerbuilding up a library of photographs now in use worldwide in art history archives and numerous publications. Among his early clients were the Bollingen Foundation in New York and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, for whom he provided photographs for twenty volumes of the Buildings of England series. He was Ben Nicholson's personal photographer for the last ten years of the painter's life. He went back to work at the Courtauld Institute for twelve years, travelling extensively around Europe to photograph historic architecture and sculpture for the Conway Library at the Courtauld. On his retirement he transferred his collection of negatives of architectural and sculptural subjects to the Conway Library. He returned to freelance work in 1985, when he was commissioned to take all the photographs for the catalogue of the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection. His career broadened to encompass the photography of fine art. He worked for the National Trust, English Heritage, the Crafts Council, the Tate Gallery, Kettle's Yard in Cambridge and numerous other institutions, architects, artists, craftsmen and collectors. He continued working for the Sainsbury collection – on several exhibition catalogues and photographing new acquisitions – right up to his retirement in April 2004, keeping a studio and darkroom at Wysing Arts Centre from 1997 until then. and Henley Optical Company Photograph by James Austin The book Antique Woodworking Tools, in which James Austin published more than 1,500 illustrations, clearly demonstrates his skill in photographing small objects in the round. Mark Bridge pinpointed this in his review of the book in Antiques Trade Gazette when he wrote: " has managed to capture the elusive qualities of balance, texture and patina which make the finest tools a pleasure to handle, frequently lifting them into the realm of folk art".
Exhibition
Wingfield Barns Arts Centre, Eye, Suffolk: solo exhibition of specially commissioned photographs, summer 2002
