CCJ (Leadfield) is one of a suite of photographs of historic Southern California locales titled View from Here. Each image in the suite is a view of a window and out the window, with the focus on the interior framing, leaving the landscape beyond distinctly blurred. Photographs are identified by the person connected to the location, and the structure of each was either built by that person or associated with his/her narrative.
Courtney Chauncey Julian (1885–1934), not widely known today, was an early twentieth-century prospector and founder of the Death Valley mining town Leadfield (now a popular ghost town). His life journey epitomizes the boom-and-bust potential of California, the land of reinvention. Julian successfully found petroleum, but he did not find lead in Leadfield. Exploiting early successes, he lured investors to buy shares of lead mines in a place where there was none. This scam and the subsequent scandal associated with overselling stock in Julian Petroleum forced him to flee to Shanghai, and he stands in history as another emblematic figure in the wild ride of entrepreneurship for which California remains a haven.
Siting photography’s unique ability to simultaneously obfuscate and document, Christina Fernandez creates a tension between now and then, here and there, clarity and the unknown, and reveals that the problem with historical narratives is truth. CCJ (Leadfield) also presents a view of the vision and imagination of the state’s historical figures.
Eve Schillo
2021