James Hezekiah Crockwell was born on March 21, 1855 in Woodbury, Iowa. In 1863 or 1864 young James moved to Salt Lake City after his father, Dr. John D.M. Crockwell, converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. James and his brother George started a small business coloring photographs. After George left the business, Crockwell spent nearly a year as an apprentice to C.W. Carter in 1883. Shortly thereafter he formed a partnership with William Ottinger. For the next two years Crockwell and Ottinger used Salt Lake City as a home base and worked as traveling photographers in southern Utah and Southeast Nevada. In 1886 Crockwell bought out Ottinger and spent the next two years as an itinerant photographer for the mining towns of Nevada. In 1888 he settled in Virginia City, but moved back to Salt Lake City after business there tapered off. In Utah he photographed the mining towns of Park City and Eureka before becoming Utah's official photographer at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Afterwards Crockwell returned to Salt Lake City, but business was not good and there were expensive medical bills to pay. By 1900 he quit photography to become a traveling salesman.

In 1877 James Crockwell and Millie Bassett were married. They would have five children, Earl, Ada, Lula, Lawrence, and Clara Nevada (nicknamed Polly Wampus). In the spring of 1889 daughter Ada was fatally burned in a fire set by an angry former employee. Lulu was also badly burned. In 1915 Millie died. By 1930 Crockwell was living with a daughter in Alameda, California. He died on September 16, 1940.