Alec Soth

From Here to There: Alec Soth's America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist's photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist's working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer's "Riverrun"--a meditation on Soth's series Sleeping by the Mississippi--and August Kleinzahler's poem "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist's book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America's suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan.
Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos.

It's hard to believe that the first edition of Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi appeared only in 2004, so swiftly has the book become a classic of our time. Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Sleeping by the Mississippi captures America's iconic yet oft-neglected "third coast." Soth's richly descriptive, large format color photographs describe an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, his book elicits a consistent mood of loneliness, longing and reverie. "In the book's 46 ruthlessly edited pictures," writes Anne Wilkes Tucker, "Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex... The coherence of the project places Soth's book exactly within the tradition of Walker Evans' American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans." Like Frank's classic book, Sleeping by the Mississippi merges a documentary style with a poetic sensibility. The Mississippi River is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created from a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust. Featuring a new linen-bound cover with a tipped-on image, this is the third print run of a volume which has become one of the most widely collected and highly acclaimed photo books of recent times.

In this beautifully produced third issue of the international art/fashion collectible Fashion Magazine, the acclaimed American photographer Alec Soth plays Editor-in-Chief, Advertising Director and sole photographic contributor--to quietly mesmerizing results. Featuring exquisite printing, unexpected gatefolds, special inks, varnishes and paper changes, this magazine-as-artist's-book-as-sociological-study-as-tongue-in-cheek-(yet-also-very-real)-advertising-vehicle contains some of the most riveting work being produced by a young photographer today. Soth explains: "While Fashion Magazine has a single photographer-author, it's still a magazine, not a book. So it doesn't follow my usual mode of slow, solitary production. It's collaboration. The ideas for the collaboration were formulated very quickly. I was approached by the folks at the Paris office of Magnum to work on this issue late last year. I immediately said yes. I was a huge fan of the previous two editions (by Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden) and was looking for an excuse to play with fashion…. I often say that when I am making a portrait, I'm not 'capturing' the other person. If the photograph documents anything, it is the space between the subject and myself. Something similar is at work with Fashion Magazine. I'm not really comfortable saying I know anything about Paris or its fashion world. And I suspect that most fashionable Parisians know just as little about Minnesota. What is interesting is the space between us. My favorite example of this involves Chanel. In Paris, I photographed Karl Lagerfeld at the Grand Palais. In Minnesota, I photographed a girl with a Chanel shopping bag in front of Sally's Beauty Shop. With this magazine, I'm trying to explore the distance between those two places."
Photographer Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He is the recipient of major fellowships from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations, and was awarded the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His photographs are represented in major public collections including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Soth's widely acclaimed first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004, followed by Niagara and Dog Days Bogotá in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Soth is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York and Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis. He is an associate photographer with Magnum Photos.

By way of follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth turns his eye to another iconic body of water, Niagara Falls. And as with his photographs of the Mississippi, these images are less about natural wonder than human desire. "I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers," says Soth, "the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion." The subject may be hot, but the pictures are quiet, the rigorously composed and richly detailed products of a large-format 8x10 camera. Working over the course of two years on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls, Soth edited the results of his labors down to a tight and surprising album. He depicts newlyweds and naked lovers, motel parking lots, pawnshop wedding rings and love letters from the subjects he photographed. We read about teenage crushes, workplace affairs, heartbreak and suicide. Oscar Wilde wrote, "The sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life." Niagara brings viewers both the passion and the disappointment--a remarkable portrayal of modern love and its aftermath.