Alec Soth considered giving up photography, before a new project exploring human connection drew him back in. ‘I can’t help it,‘ he admits. ‘I am who I am.’
Alec Soth seriously considered giving up photography, before a new project exploring human connection in the contemporary world drew him back in. ‘I can’t help it,‘ he admits. ‘I am who I am.’
Sleeping by The Mississippi by Alec Soth is one of the defining publications in the photobook era. First published by Steidl in 2004, it was American photographer Alec Soth’s first book, sold through three editions, and established him as one of the leading lights of contemporary photographic practice. This MACK edition launches to coincide with the first exhibition in London dedicated to the series at Beetles+Huxley gallery, and includes two photographs that were not included in the previous versions of the book.
For our annual photo issue we reached out to 16 up-and-coming photographers and asked them which photographer inspired them to pursue the medium. Then we approached their “idols” to see if they would be willing to publish work in the issue as well. What was provided, we think, creates a unique conversation about the line of influence between young artists and those more established in their careers. This post features an interview with Adam Lach and his chosen idol, Alec Soth, and an explanation of each of their bodies of work.
AS: That’s a tough one, and I love processing Szarkowski quotes. He also talked about how photography, on a mental level, is just pointing. It’s just pointing your finger, and saying, “look at that.” And when you point to something you’re not showing the molecules, you’re not showing its history, its ‘everything.’ You’re showing this thing in this context, in this fraction of a second, in this light. Everything beneath the surface exists, but it’s imagined. And one has to come to terms with that.
As for his MFA students who may be less concerned about creative freedom and more worried about a career, he advises: “First of all, it is hard. And I’ve had tons of missteps along the way,” he says. “That’s the thing about being creative. You come up with creative solutions to problems. And that’s not just in your work, but in life.”
Alec Soth, a photographer who lives in Minneapolis and travels the Midwest and the South with the energy of a latter-day Walker Evans, did not join the artists who came to New Orleans a decade ago to capture what he calls the “eye candy of decay and ruin.” Instead, he waited, preferring to capture the city of water ten years later, a city in a state of both persistent suffering and persistent renewal. Soth shows us the unnerving image of a freestanding column—all that is left of a house in the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward—but he moves toward a vision of promise, a lonely figure at his leisure, staring into the waters of today’s New Orleans. ♦
Stacey Baker has always been obsessed with how couples meet. When she asked photographer Alec Soth to help her explore this topic, they found themselv…
Stacey Baker has always been obsessed with how couples meet. When she asked photographer Alec Soth to help her explore this topic, they found themselves at the world’s largest speed-dating event, held in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day, and at the largest retirement community in Nevada — with Soth taking portraits of pairs in each locale. Between these two extremes, they unwound a beautiful through-line of how a couple goes from meeting to creating a life together.
Photographer Alec Soth and his Little Brown Mushroom (LBM) publishing imprint recently announced a hiatus from bookmaking to pursue a new initiative: The Winnebago Workshop, “a mobile classroom that puts artists with teens to create multimedia stories.”
In a recent TED talk, photographer Alec Soth and New York Times Magazine photo editor Stacey Baker tell the story of an assignment they worked on together exploring the topic of how couples meet
For his latest book release “Songbook” (MACK, January 2015), Soth traded the solo human experience for one of human connectivity, seeking to find out what connects us and how we stay that way within the proliferation of virtual social media
When I did Sleeping by the Mississippi, I gave away contact prints of Charles (the guy with the airplanes) never thinking it would be popular or sell. The fact that it became my most known image delights me. One curious thing about that picture is that I made about five exposures. I’m pretty certain that if I’d chosen another exposure it wouldn’t have been my signature image.
We began with Alec Soth, who welcomed the new year from St. Paul, Minnesota. Gueorgui Pinkhassov showed us Moscow, from a candlelit Orthodox Christmas celebration and a look at life across the city. Dominic Nahr documented his trip home, to Hong Kong, to visit his mother, and Bieke Depoorter took her first trip to northern Norway. Finally, Jacob Aue Sobol’s portraits of Milwaukee brought us full circle, back to the Midwest. Here’s a look at highlights from the month
The photographer Alec Soth and the writer Brad Zellar have undertaken a long-term project, born out of simple pleasure, that captures both the humanity and banality of the American continent. Their self-described “North American ramblings” are presented in an irregularly published newspaper titled The LBM Dispatch, which recalls the documentary-style photography of days long gone. Soth describes it as “being in the style of both newspaper journalism and the Walker Evans/James Agee approach in ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.’ ”
The photographer Alec Soth published a book this month consisting of vintage table-tennis photos collected from eBay and elsewhere, accompanied by a conversation between the Ping-Pong-obsessed writers Pico Iyer and Geoff Dyer. Table tennis is “a way to do a physical sport that has actual athletic qualities but is kind of contained,” says Soth, who plays every day in his studio. “There’s a real mental element to it. It’s not chess, but your brain is engaged. It’s a break from neuroses.”
