Capturing Americana With Jason Lee

Jason Lee is an actor, photographer, and skateboarder. The 188-page book is part of Refueled Magazine’s One Series, and features nearly 200 images taken on Polaroid peel-apart film over the last 10 years. The limited-edition first volume sold out in pre-sale, but don’t worry, Lee is hard at work on future instant film publications.

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Lee first made his name as a skateboarder in the early 1990’s, and traces the big awakening of his creative urges back to hanging out with the original “weirdo skaters” and launching his own Stereo Skateboards, where they made videos with Super 8 film, scored skate parts with jazz, and incorporated still work from photographers like Tobin Yelland, Gabe Morford, and Ari Marcopoulos into their videos. But maybe most influential was the legendary skater Mark Gonzales, who Lee deems the “Bob Dylan of skateboarding.”

In those days, photography was mostly an interest rather than a career path. Lee is perhaps best known for his work as an actor—you might remember him as the titular character from My Name Is Earl (2005-2009), but if you haven’t seen Mallrats (1995), make it a priority—and it wasn’t until 2001, that Lee picked up a couple professional film cameras, a Leica M6 and Mamiya medium format camera, and started shooting regularly. It quickly became a passion, and that’s where his new book, the first of two volumes with Refueled Magazine, comes in.