Horribilis: the Last Grizzly Bears of the West

By Jimmy Fike

This series features photographs of the sites where the last grizzly bears were killed in each of the states that constituted their historic range. In the 1800’s grizzly populations saw a precipitous decline, due to the expansion of settlers from the eastern United States. Grizzly bears were slowly extirpated, state by state, and now only survive as a remnant population, occupying only three percent of their historic range. The idea for this series was inspired by the writer and naturalist Aldo Leopold. His essay, “Thinking Like a Mountain” details the hunt for, and subsequent killing of the last grizzly bear in Arizona in the Escudilla Mountain Wilderness.

In his essay, he laments the extirpation of the grizzly bear and how its absence radically changed the perception of the landscape, “Escudilla still hangs on the horizon, but when you see it, you no longer think of the bear. It’s only a mountain now.” Over the years, county by county, state by state the wild landscapes of the west experienced a similar symbolic and literal die-off as the bears and their mythic presence disappeared. Grizzly bears are considered a keystone species and without them these ecosystems were profoundly changed. The large photographs in Horribillis will convey the haunting absence of the grizzly and provide an interesting contemporary dialectic by comparing and contrasting the once verdant landscapes of the past with their contemporary state, undoubtedly changed by human presence, the passing time and the extirpation of large predators. The images are shot during the twilight of the blue hour. Brooding, ominous scenes that suggest the haunting presence of the bears, sites that activate narrativity on a scale which allows viewers to inhabit the space. I hope the work can shed light on this fascinating, if dark, history and help in conservation and reintroduction efforts currently underway.

Jimmy Fike was born on a cold winter morning in Birmingham, Alabama in 1970. Even at an early age he showed a penchant for art and love for exploring nature. He earned a BA in Art from Auburn University and an MFA in Photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Currently, he lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his daughter Isobel and dogs Scrappy and Little Maggie, where he works as Residential Art Faculty at Estrella Mountain Community College. His photographic work on wild edible plants has been exhibited extensively across the United States, featured in the L.A. Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Atlas Obscura and Mother Jones, and can be found in the permanent collections of the Eastman House Museum, Bank of America, Bernheim Research Forest and St. Lawrence University. His book, Edible Plants, was published by Indiana University Press in March, 2022. When not teaching or making art, Jimmy enjoys camping, reading, cooking, gardening, playing guitar and visiting art museums.