Milk Lover by Summer ‘07 contender Jim Turbert

Jim Turbert, who has an entire self-published fan club dedicated to him, takes a lot of pictures of himself and then posts them on the internet. Seriously, this is what he does. He even says so himself:

I am a serial self-portraitist. My recent work is about the perceived expectations that my family and friends had for me as a lad and how they contrast with the reality of what I have become. My father used to tell me about how awesome his dad and his grandfather were because they were fancy doctors and lawyers who went to Yale. He told me that he expected me to go to Yale to continue the glorious tradition of his forefathers. There was never much discussion of the fact that he was a junior college drop-out, and that expecting me to go to such an elite institution bordered on the ridiculous. I don’t think he meant anything bad by it, but my point is that neither my father nor anyone else ever said to me, “Geez Jim, it would be really cool if you were a darkroom/technical support guy at a New England college for affluent women. Also, it would really be something if you took lots of pictures of yourself and posted them on the Internet.� This is however an accurate representation of what I do. I assure you, it is not glamorous.

These pictures usually come out very funny in that dry, ironic humor kind of way. Like, milk dribble all over this smiley-faced dude’s beard? Hilarious.

Navigating Jim’s fan club is entertaining as well, since Turbert is more than just a photographer–he is like a personality-driven entity or something. My favorite part on the site is where he compares himself to Britney Spears and mathematically proves that he is more interesting than her.

Honestly, I think Jim is awesome and so did past HHS panelists/bloggers, who honorably mentioned him once before. Jen also curated him into the PRC Annual Juried Exhibition for which she was the guest juror this past Spring.

Since Jim is too funny for rephrasing, I leave you with these words, fresh off of Turbert’s fingertips:

I’m a 31 year old guy who takes lots of pictures of himself and posts them on the Internet. I work at Wellesley College as a darkroom manager/tech support guy/equipment manager/whatever else they want me to do. I’ve been doing that for 5 years. Before finding steady employment, I went to Massachusetts College of Art where I concentrated in photography. Growing up in (very) rural Connecticut, I wasn’t exposed to many fine art photographers, but my grandmother’s large collection of family albums first piqued my interest in photography. I was given a crappy Kodak 110 something or another for my birthday one year, and I took a ton of pictures with it. I was clearly not a prodigy, but because I was apparently interested, an uncle “let me borrow� his 35mm SLR camera when I was in third grade. Though I never use it anymore, I still have that camera. Now I have several cameras, some great and some small, and I use them as I see fit.

Make sure to check out funny pictures of Jim’s fans under the “FAN” section of his site.

I’m going to bed now. But, unless you’ve already entered this season’s competition, you don’t deserve to go to sleep.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 11:19 pm by Marina and is filed under Contenders, Summer '07 Hot Shots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.