Democratic Vistas

by Jason Lee, Tim Carpenter

Democratic Vistas  is a collaborative monograph that chronicles unpublished work from Tim Carpenter and Jason Lee from 2008 - 2019.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.

“ I've always tried to stay the course of honestly documenting what I see as I see it and finding some kind of appreciation for this American landscape. That's been the driving force for me from the beginning. ” - Jason Lee

“ It's very important to me to think about the distances, the edges, the focal planes – it's the formal differences that are meaningful to me and how I'm positioning myself against the world. How I feel about the world is manifested in the pictures. ” - Tim Carpenter

• 9.25 inches x 10.25 inches
• Softcover, smyth sewn
• 72 pages, 55 b/w plates