Jesse Andrew Warren Simmons
Work with Jesse
I am a returned citizen. Sentenced to life-in-prison as a juvenile, I spent 18 years in maximum security prisons in Utah and Virginia. After my release in December of 2021, I returned to my hometown of Wilmington Delaware and pursued a career in social service. A former painter I gravitated to film photography in my spare time. Largely inspired by, and in honor of, my friend Moneta Sleet III. Mo was a burgeoning film photographer and darkroom savant.
I shoot black and white film and develop the shots in the darkroom I built by hand in the basement of my Wilmington rowhome. Many of my prints are then hand tinted with Marshall Oils using historical techniques to create one-of-a-kind prints made to last. When digital fails analog will remain. I shoot in the hometown that raised me, trying to capture what I remember in depictions of what I have returned to.