Michael Saint James

Michael Saint James

A R T I S T • E D U C A T O R

Bridges are an ideal subject for photographer/writer Michael Saint James, who has a hard time sitting still. Artist, educator, and world traveler, Michael’s lively curiosity is always getting the better of him.

Michael has been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 years, though he rarely stays put. Fortunately, his wife owns a travel business. “I stopped counting after I visited my fortieth country. Travel had become a state of mind,” he says.

In May 2013, following stints in Japan, Cyprus, Croatia, Burma, the Himalayas, and the Antarctic, Michael visited Paris. Entranced with the bridges crossing the Seine as symbols of the city and its history, as well as vital components of its infrastructure, he decided to become a “Parisian for a year” in order to record them as fully as possible.

Michael’s artistic pursuits include graphic design, book design, film editing, and sound recording, as well as his first love, photography. He says he also paints when he is “feeling courageous.”

Michael loves sharing what he does and what he has learned. As an educator with California teaching credentials, he has taught media production and technology arts as well as photography. He has also taught art history and visual storytelling, and is an expert speaker on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Indeed, he walked in Vincent Van Gogh’s footsteps through the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in order to immerse himself in that troubled master’s vision.

The father of two grown children, Michael once owned a café in Berkeley, California. He has bicycled from Las Vegas to Washington, D.C. and is rumored to play a mean blues harmonica.