A Conversation with Jason Lee & Tim Carpenter | Democratic Vistas

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Published by Smog Press this year, Democratic Vistas is a collaborative monograph that chronicles unpublished work from Tim Carpenter and Jason Lee from 2008 - 2019.

The project is inspired by Walt Whitman’s 1871 book of the same title, in which Whitman’s visionary lyrical prose confronts post-Civil War America and beckons its soul. Lee and Carpenter fostered a kinship while making work in rural America, with Lee working primarily in Oklahoma and Carpenter in Illinois, and they started sharing “vistas” with each other, each photograph informing the next.

Democratic Vistas is a culmination of those informal conversations. Whitman’s poetic America is weaved through the roads and homes photographed by Carpenter and Lee.

Buy the book: https://smog-press.xyz/collections/fr...

0:00 - Intro
0:31 - Skateboarding & Acting
2:44 - Jason's Early Influences
5:29 - Form vs. Subject
6:55 - Tim's Early Influences & John Gossage
11:00 - Jason & Henry Wessel
13:20 - Composing
16:56 - Subject Matter
18:33 - Henri Cartier-Bresson
22:00 - Book Conception
24:00 - Advice

People Mentioned: William Christenberry, Joel Sternfeld, Henry Wessel, Alfred Stiegletz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, Stephen Shore, Robert Adams, John Gossage, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Helen Levitt, Martin Heidegger, Andrea Modica, Wallace Stevens, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

My work: https://bryanbirks.com