Jim Haberman was born in Madison, Wis. He earned a BA in English at the University of Wisconsin and an MA in Photographic Design at Goddard College.
Some of the most formative experiences in his photographic education have been workshops with Ralph Gibson, Emmet Gowin, and Minor White.

In his professional life, Jim has handled a wide range of endeavors; he published a set of 40 postcards of his work, distributed internationally by Fotofolio; designed four toys based on his characters from his American Scenes portfolio; and worked as the photographer for an archaeological excavation of a Roman Fort in Israel. Former photographic clients include Laura Ashley, Inc.; Trader Joes; The Semitic Museum, Harvard University; and Michael Dukakis. He was a photography instructor at the New England School of Art & Design for 16 years and Artist-in-residence at Freedom House, Roxbury, MA for 10 years, where he designed and taught a photography program for elderly people sponsored by the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, the Polaroid Foundation, and the Boston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. He has been a guest lecturer at a number of institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ; Boston Institute of Contemporary Arts; Rhode Island School of Design; Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Maine Photographic Workshops; and University of New Hampshire.

Recently, Jim was chosen as a finalist in the Hasselblad Masters Program and he received an Emerging Artist Grant from the Durham Arts Council in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council for his latest project, Middle East: Multiple Realities. He also received a project grant from the Orange County, NC Arts Commission in support of this work. In 2008, he was a Finalist for a Visual Artist Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities and was a Finalist in those competitions four times.

Among the public collections which include Jim’s photographs are the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France; International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside, CA; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; MIT, Cambridge, MA; the Polaroid Collection, Cambridge, MA; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH; and Maine Photographic Workshops, Rockport, ME.

Jim's work has appeared in numerous publications, including Photo Review; Best of Photography Annual 2008; B&W Magazine 2008 Single Image Contest Awards; Best of Photography Annual 2007; Photographer's Forum Magazine; Boston Globe Magazine; Afterimage; The Polaroid Book, Selections from the Polaroid Collections of Photography; Three Dimensional Illustration; The Creative Camera; Humor; The Visionary Pin-hole; Exploring Color Photography; Modern Photography magazine; and Popular Photography Quarterly magazine.

Jim’s photographs have been shown in solo exhibitions at Soho Gallery, New York City; Panopticon Gallery, Boston; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; and Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; as well as included in over 150 group exhibitions.