Stumbled onto Jason Lee and while it’s a bit hard to see that he was the actor that we used to watch on TV but damn it if it isn’t the one and the same.  

HIs BIO

JASON LEE

Born in Orange, California in 1970, Jason Lee is an American film photographer, actor, producer, and director. Well known for having been a professional skateboarder during skateboarding’s very pivotal late 80s and early 90s, Lee would go on to pursue acting in 1993, working in film, television, and voiceover, and with such directors as Kevin Smith, Cameron Crowe, Lawrence Kasdan, and Brad Bird.

Retiring from skateboarding in 1995, Lee has maintained solid ties to the industry, most notably through his partnership with longtime friend and fellow ex-professional skateboarder, Chris Pastras, and their now 26-year-old skate brand, Stereo Skateboards, which Lee co-manages with Pastras.

In 2002, Lee developed a passion for film photography and has been an active photographer and film advocate since, having had his work both published and exhibited throughout the years. In October 2016, Lee published a selection of small and large format Polaroid and Fuji instant film photographs spanning a decade as a special limited hardbound issue of Fort Worth-based Refueled Magazine. Just 500 sold-out signed and numbered copies were produced, with three of the copies inhabiting the libraries of the SFMOMA, Amon Carter, and Philbrook museums.

Lee’s follow-up photo book, A PLAIN VIEW, released in 2018 through Film Photographic, is comprised of large format color film photographs made throughout Texas in early 2017. The publication will be the first for Film Photographic, an Instagram film community page and now photography publishing platform founded by Lee in 2015.  

In 2017, Lee held two successful preview exhibitions of selected prints from A PLAIN VIEW at Artspace 111 in Fort Worth and Preacher Gallery in Austin. An exhibition at the Patterson-Appleton Arts Center in Denton, Texas was held in 2018 and featured eighteen large-scale prints from the book.  

For 2019, Lee will be exhibiting his Oklahoma photographs at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. A companion book will be released at the closing of the 6-month exhibition. 

Lee is also the subject of a forthcoming documentary from director Greg Hunt that will take the viewer on the road with him as he exposes his remaining boxes of now-expired 8x10 Polaroid film, a favorite medium of Lee’s and one that is no longer being produced. An accompanying book of the large format Polaroids will be published by Film Photographic, with the originals being exhibited. Slated for 2020/21. 

A retrospective B&W photo book is slated for a 2022 release, to feature American photographs dating back to 2007 and to be published by Film Photographic. 

Lee has also produced and directed music videos for Beck and the band Midlake, a short documentary and live concert film featuring Midlake, two Stereo Skateboards films, and THE WHITE DOOR, a 35mm short film starring Giovanni Ribisi and Beth Riesgraf, and is currently working on a skateboarding-based 16mm short film that began production in 2017, to be released at a later date.