For his audacious new project, Vanishing Cultures, Chicago photographer Dennis Manarchy is traveling around the United States creating astonishing, one-of-a-kind portraits of Americans who represent the vanishing cultures of the nation.

Manarchy has created an amazing 35-foot-long camera called “Eye of America”. Based on 19th century, large format cameras, it’s so big that it has to travel on a flat-bed truck and is large enough for a photographer to work inside of the camera. The negatives that it produces are 6 by 4.5 feet and are so enormous that windows fitted with LED lights are used for a lightbox for viewing. The resulting prints are two stories tall.

The project is not an exercise in nostalgia or in steampunk aesthetics, but a sincere effort to capture the vanishing cultures that disappear daily and to celebrate American diversity.