Swim out into the Pacific and look back to the shore. To the couple kissing in the hot afternoon, and the young girl rollerskating along the front, and the family setting up camp on the soft, warm sand. To the blues and yellows and pinks of fierce, determined revelry.

Santa Monica, where the wooden pier juts out into the Pacific Ocean, marks the end of Route 66. The great American journey west culminates here, and it is on this short stretch of coast that Sarah Lee began shooting her photographic series in 2015.

In West of West Sarah Lee and Laura Barton explore the idea of the West in shaping American identity, with its idealism and notions of the frontier, and what the American West means in an age of political turbulence, when the East is the rising global force and the frontier is shifting once more.

A search for the meaning of the American West, told through extraordinary images by acclaimed photographer Sarah Lee

About the Author

Sarah Lee is a photographer for the Guardian. She has been an official BAFTA photographer since 2015, an ambassador for Leica and a fellow of the British American Project. @sarahmlee47

Laura Barton is a writer and a broadcaster who regularly contributes to BBC Radio 4. Her first novel Twenty-One Locks (2010) was awarded a Betty Trask prize. @missbarton

Book Information
ISBN 9781783527694
Author Sarah Lee
Format Hardback
Page Count 160
Imprint Unbound Digital
Publisher Unbound