The Online Photographer: Artists Ain't Saints: Jim Marshall, 1936-2010

Practically the first thing Jim told me was to make a print for myself of anything I printed for him and he’d sign it. For all I know, my collection of Jim Marshall prints is worth more than everything he paid me over the last decade. He could alternate between being ridiculously tightfisted and incredibly generous. Mess with his intellectual property rights and he would go for your throat, literally and legally. Lots of people tried to rip him off, sometimes people who should know better like major magazines and television networks, sometimes just people who thought they could get away with putting a photograph of his on a T-shirt. Jim made a lot of money off of the many people who tried to rip him off. But ask Jim for something, almost anything, and if he didn’t think you were out to rip him off, he’d say yes.