James Fee: Darkroom Odyssey

I conducted this interview with the late James Fee in 1994 for Camera & Darkroom magazine, where I worked as Managing Editor. It was the first installment of “In the Darkroom,” a department I initiated in which noted photographers like Fee, George Krause and Thomas Barrow discussed their developing and printing methods in relation to their work’s thematic implications. At the time, Fee was beginning to earn widespread acclaim for his “Photographs of America” series, which chronicled a country in decline through haunting images of abandoned factories, hardscrabble towns and neglected cultural icons.