Jim Cochrane has been photographing in Canada and internationally since 1980. Alongside his commissioned work for prestige national and international firms he has built up an impressive private body of work.
For decades, corporate commissions and private amusements. Corporations gave him the resources for his private amusements and they often used the processes perfected from his amusements to their purposes.
He was working on an industrial film crew shooting 16mm film across Canada when they were laid off in 1979. He had a portfolio of unique ‘commercial’ transparencies of industries coast to coast to coast and a portfolio of 5x7 inch B&W selenium toned landscape contact prints. He used the latter to get an exhibition grant from the Ontario Art’s Council and the former to get commercial work from Art Directors and Designers, working for advertising and design firms.