Watch this virtual talk where celebrated actor, director, photographer, and skateboarder Jason Lee joined Shannon Smith of Etherton Gallery on January 14th to discuss the gallery’s exhibition, Alternative Views, also featuring the work of Frank Gohlke. The exhibition marked a rare opportunity to experience the American landscape through two distinct photographic perspectives; Jason Lee's work uncovers overlooked and incongruous scenes on his epic road trips, while Frank Gohlke explores the landscape through sustained attention to place.
Over the last twenty-five years, Jason Lee has travelled thousands of miles across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas to make images in small towns and rural communities affected by tectonic changes in American society. Working in both black and white and color, his photographs reflect a cinematic sensibility influenced by films such as Terence Malick’s Badlands (1973), Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984), and David Byrne’s True Stories (1986), the cinematography of Robby Müller, and the observational approach of photographer Henry Wessel. Henry Wessel and Frank Gohlke were both featured in the landmark 1975 New Topographics exhibition at the George Eastman House, linking Lee to a lineage of landscape photographers who approached the post war suburban landscape of tract houses, highways and industrial parks with a cool, cerebral eye. Alternative Views presents a selection of Lee’s photographs from his travels through the West, combining a keen attention to the visual ironies of daily life with a cinematic palette and a New Topographics detachment that imbues images such as Lamesa, Texas, 2017, with both aloofness and quiet nostalgia.
Image credit: Jason Lee, Lamesa, Texas, 2017. Copyright Jason Lee and courtesy of Etherton Gallery
