Photographer James Fee Dies Shortly Before His Final Images Are Exhibited

James Fee, a fine art and documentary photographer known for his images of urban decay and lonely American landscapes, has died at age 56.

He died Labor Day, Sept. 4, at home in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to Craig Krull of the Craig Krull Gallery, who represented Fee for 16 years.

Fee's projects included "Road," "Photographs of America," and "Four Days in New York," which showed familiar tourist sites from dark or obscure perspectives, such as the back of the Statue of Liberty seen through a bundle of utility lines. Fee's mournful black-and-white images speak of a country whose icons and attractions are ominously crumbling away.

"James was a very deep believer in the true meaning and principles of American civilization, such as equal rights and freedom and democracy," Krull says. "But he was always disappointed in what the country had become and what it was becoming."

Fee was diagnosed with terminal cancer in December 2005. In the last months of his life he continued to produce photographs and arranged for his prints to be turned over to museums, says Carol McCusker, curator of photography at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.

This summer, Fee took two road trips to Monterey and Joshua Tree National Park, where he produced his final pictures. Six photographs from that trip are now on display at the MoPA, as digital enlargements of prints Fee developed in the darkroom. Fee signed off on the last of the prints a week before he died. He called his final project "For Edmund" in tribute to his mentor Edmund Teske.

The exhibition, which will have a formal opening Friday, will move to the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica in December.

Fee's friends describe him as a deep thinker who lived and breathed his work.

"You would say hello to him or call him on the phone and within two minutes you were deep into some philosophical quandary," McCusker says.

Fee often expressed disgust with the U.S. government and the direction it was heading, but Krull describes him a patriot who believed things could be made better.

"In a sense, he was an optimist with a dark cloud," Krull says.

"I don't want to die looking at the world as being a negative place," Fee said in an upcoming article in Black & White Magazine. "I want to die with a vision of it being a positive place, even though conditions throughout the world are worse now than when I started the 'America' series. The politics and politicians are worse, for example. So there is a level of unintended irony to these images."

Lee was influenced by his father, Russell James Fee, a Marine Corps medic in World War II who was psychologically scarred after participating in the brutal fighting on the Pacific island of Peleliu. Russell Fee committed suicide in 1972.

James Fee undertook a project inspired by his father's photographs of Peleliu, which also dealt in a way with the destruction of landscapes. Fee visited Peleliu in 1998 and photographed some of the same sites as his father, this time with color film.

Color was a rarity in Fee's work. Favoring the glowing tones produced through old developing methods, Fee often used a traditional silver process. Whenever he could, he would buy rare photo papers, now banned because of high levels of cadmium they contain. He often experimented with darkroom techniques, cutting and overlapping negatives, sometimes printing images marred by dirt or fingerprints.

In addition to his personal work, Fee shot portraits and stories for magazines.

Fee was born Dec. 7, 1949, according to the biography on his web site. He was raised in Iowa and eventually moved to San Francisco.

Fee taught at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., from 1995 to 2003, and also taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his son, Illya, two sisters, Kate Fee Fulkerson and Mary Fee Steed, and his companion Keiko Nobe.

A small memorial service was held recently, and another memorial is being planned for Dec. 7 at the Craig Krull Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Building B-3, Santa Monica, Calif.