Alec Soth’s latest venture on the printed page is a self-published newspaper with the gothic-script title of The Last Days of W. 36 photographs within which even the inanimate objects look simply worn out and exhausted. With many of us down on our luck, this is supposed to only cost you a fiver.
Elliott Erwitt and Alec Soth, two great photographers widely separated by their vision, style, and generations–but sharing a sense of irony, self-effacing wit, and a photo agency (Magnum)—took the stage at New York’s Javits Center last night to talk to a packed audience about their work and careers.
photo by Alec Soth
Alec Soth: So let me start the conversation by asking what you want. If you ran this blog, how would you make it better?
Alec Soth wrote a seminal photography blog (here) then one day up and quit. And, I’m not talking “hey, I’m getting tired of this s* I think I’ll pull back a bit,” I’m talking Bermuda-triangle-sudden-radio-silence quit. I always figured the man’s got his reasons and we’ll leave it at that. But, after you’ve been on the sharp end of a blog for awhile the reasons present themselves and I started to develop theories about it. I decided to ask him “what’s up.”
Check it out here.
We’ve heard the names of the new Magnum Photos members who were elected at the cooperative’s meeting in Paris last week:
Jonas Bendiksen, Antoine D’Agata and Alec Soth have been elected full members.
Olivia Arthur and Peter Van Agtmael are new Magnum nominees.
Check it out here.
:
If Beverly Hills has a Main Street, it’s Rodeo Drive—three blocks of palm trees and designer boutiques with names like Armani, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton. Impossibly expensive cars—Ferraris, Rolls-Royces, Lamborghinis—cruise down the strip. Paparazzi stalk red carpets and limousines.
From the balcony of a brand new Chanel Boutique one evening this past December, Minneapolis photographer Alec Soth, an invited guest at the store’s glamorous opening party, surveys this scene, clad in a black blazer and black slacks he bought with the help of an former intern—”a real fashionable dude.”
Inside, in an oversized dressing room intended for the private shopping of the elite, hang three large photographs of a Paris fashion show snapped by Soth. Mingling throughout the store are Hollywood starlets (Hilary Duff, Angie Harmon) with flawless bodies wrapped tight in extravagant clothes. Standing near Soth on the balcony is the young actor Chris Klein (American Pie). It occurs to Soth that Klein’s suit looks much better than his own does.
Check it out here. Via Tim Gruber via APAD.
New York Magazine via Alec Soth:
The artist Dash Snow rammed a screwdriver into his buzzer the other day. He has no phone. He doesn’t use e-mail. So now, if you want to speak to him, you have to go by his apartment on Bowery and yell up. Lorax-like, he won’t come to the window to let you see that he sees you: He has a periscope he puts up so he can check you out first.
Partly, it comes from his graffiti days, this elusiveness, the recent adolescence the 25-year-old Snow spent tagging the city and dodging the police. “He’s pretty paranoid about lots of things in general, and some of it was dished out to him, but others he’s created himself,” says Snow’s friend, the 27-year-old artist Dan Colen, who—like so many of their friends—has made significant artistic contributions to the ever-expanding mythology of Dash Snow. Colen and Snow went to London together this fall for the Saatchi show in which they both had work. (Saatchi had bought one of Colen’s sculptures for $500,000.) Saatchi got them a fancy hotel room on Piccadilly. They had to flee it in the middle of the night with their suitcases before it was discovered that they’d created one of their Hamster’s Nests, which they’ve done quite a few times before. To make a Hamster’s Nest, Snow and Colen shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs—mushrooms, coke, ecstasy—until they feel like hamsters.
Here.
From PDN, Alec Soth on his Niagra project:
I drive a van from home. I always stay in motels. I normally stay on the Canadian side. The only things I look for in a motel are wireless Internet and a windowless bathroom for changing film. When I ask the clerk if they have these two things, they usually give me a suspicious look.
Here.
Photo:
Burma nights, Rangoon Lights, photos by John Stanmeyer
Still photographer on the set of Munich
Inside the walls with Mara Salvatrucha, Luis Sinco
Nancy Kaszerman on shooting The Red Carpet
Alec Soth’s Niagara (different than previous mention)
Other:
Former Green Beret blogging from Iraq…
…His blog (by the way, the Pulitzer is only award to work appearing in a US newspaper)
People who cut themselves will now be given clean blades in UK
Four now dead protesting cartoons
Latest edition of the North Star Chronicles, polygamist newsletter from Canada (PDF)
MP3’s of the People’s Temple Choir, now you can listen to the sounds of Jonestown
Alternative considerations of Jonestown, People’s Temple
NYT:
Al Qaeda’s Jamal Ahmed al-Badawi escapes Yemeni jail in 460 foot tunnel