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Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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James Fee
Epiphany
1998
Craig Krull Gallery
© James Fee; Courtesy Artist's Estate and Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica
LL/16155
Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
James Fee, who died of cancer in September, was born on Pearl Harbor Day, 1949. That's the least of the ironies that this photograph contains It was made on the Pacific island of Peleliu where his father, Russell, served as a medic near the war's end. During a 72-day battle in which more than 20,000 men died, Russell ferried wounded GIs under heavy fire to a ship that could have ended up like this one.
In a way, for Russell, it did. "I wonder when I'll be back. If?," he wrote home in 1944. Though never wounded physically, Russell was as disabled as this ship foundering in shallow water. As a boy in Iowa, James would awaken at night to find his father, in uniform, pointing a gun at him. His father threatened him with a gun again in 1968 when he wouldn't enlist, so James lit out for California. Four years later, Russell committed suicide.
In 1998, James went to Peleliu himself. Though now a professional photographer, he came back with only one picture the one you see here. A second trip yielded a larger trove, published in 2002 as "The Peleliu Project." But this image remains his ultimate memorial to his father's tormented life.
James Fee's own memorial will be held at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica at 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day.
[Originally published in West Magazine : December 3, 2006, p.13]
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