Hill learned quite early on how to perform and pose for the camera, for his father, Louis Hill, was entranced by the technologies of photography and motion pictures. Jerome began to take photographs in adolescence, and continued to do so for the rest of his life.

Hill's early photographs confirm his interests in drama and in architecture; many of them show him and his friends playacting, while others focus on building facades and architectural details. Later on, in his late twenties, Hill developed an appreciation for impressionistic and abstract art. His photographs began to reflect an experimentation with composition and simplicity that mirrored trends in the art world of the time.

       

In 1936, Hill published a book of photographs entitled "Trip to Greece." Designed by the famous Merle Armitage, the volume collected photographs Hill took in Greece earlier in the decade. His documentation of the Greek landscape was so extensive that the U.S. Army sought his expertise when planning operations in the area during World War II.

Hill took great pleasure in photography, and documented his life in photographs. The collection contains thousands of prints, with the bulk of them dated 1925-1972. Hill selected his most successful prints and collected them in albums, and these albums provide excellent evidence of his skills as a photographer. Hill's personal photographs comprise an intrinsic and central narrative of the collection.