James Caulfield has been a commercial photographer for more than 40 years, creating compelling images of people, places and things both here and abroad for advertising agencies and direct clients alike.
In recent years, his concentration has been on art, architecture and interiors. His interest in architectural subjects grew out of his own efforts restoring, and repurposing, a Fromann & Jebsen designed bank in Chicago, a mid-century modern Keck & Keck home in Glencoe and the repurposing of several industrial buildings in Chicago as studios in support of his advertising business.
His passion for preservation led him to volunteer his services to the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust in Oak Park, Illinois, for whom he has documented the buildings on the Trust’s annual internationally-attended house walk, Wright Plus. There he met architectural historian and author Patrick F. Cannon in 2004, with whom he collaborated on six books, including a significant revision of one of them:
Hometown Architect: The Complete Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park and River Forest, Illinois
Prairie Metropolis: Chicago and the Birth of a New American Home
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple: A Good-Time Place
Louis Sullivan: Creating a New American Architecture
The Space Within: Inside Great Chicago Buildings • Won the Independent Publisher's Gold Medal Award for Architecture
At Home in Chicago: A Living History of Domestic Architecture • Won the Independent Publisher's Gold Medal Award for Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple: A Good-Time Place Reborn • Won the Independent Publisher's Gold Medal Award for Architecture
Louis Sullivan: An American Architect
In addition to the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, he has donated images to the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation, the Society of Architectural Historians, the ICAA, the Auditorium Theater, the Pleasant Home Foundation, the Paul Schweikher Preservation Trust, the Richard Nickel Committee, the Chicago Club, both the Clarke and the Glessner House Museums, the Powhatan, Preservation Chicago, the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy, the Pullman House Project, the Holy Trinity Cathedral Restoration Project, the Second Presbyterian Church, the Rookery Building, Goldberg General Contracting, Inc., CADS, numerous preservation architects, and many more...