Photographer James Cassimus
"Without a doubt, I owe much of my acclaim to my friend and photographer extraordinaire, James Cassimus.
A close personal friend since our late teens, James has captured most of the images you see on this website.
He, in his most humble fashion has made me, and BMX look amazing through the lens of his 35mm camera.
I am thankful to have had James on my team over the years. Without his incredible talent, tireless work ethic and keen eye, I’m not really sure how the fledgling sport of freestyle BMX might have been depicted.
Thank you James for your help and friendship - for all of this, I am forever grateful."
Bob Haro -
An interview with James from J.Grant Brittain, Transworld Skateboarding
In the twenty-first century, skateboard photographers are “a dime a dozen.” There’s no lack of people running around with Hasselblad medium format cameras with the latest eBay-purchased 4,000-dollar Carl Zeiss (okay, I’m jealous) fisheye lens. There’re more clickers than you can shake a stick at. You can’t swing a dead cat by the tail without hitting (huh?) someone toting a Hasselblad. But remember, “A fancy camera does not a perfect photographer make.” What I’m getting at is that there’re oodles (a lot) of photographers, and out of those oodles, only a few really stand above the rest. Some have a “look” or a “style”-their photos are different, you know the ones. Those few photographers are the ones who beginner and intermediate photogs emulate, learn from, and bite their future style from. These present-day overachieving skate photogs are not the first-they follow a long line of greats from the past 30 years of our chosen activity (skateboarding). This little piece (at least it started out as a little piece) began as a six-page Relapse, but after Swift and I drooled over the pile of images that photographer James Cassimus shot in the 1970s and 80s, it swelled into this lengthy feature. James’ file cabinets are bursting at the seams, so we decided to expose you to the photos that inspired all of today’s great shooters-consciously or unknowingly.J.Grant Brittain Hero Worshipper