The Walker presents From Here to There: Alec Soth's America, the first U.S. survey of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most compelling voices in contemporary photography, whose offbeat images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. The exhibition is on view September 12, 2010 - January 16, 2011.
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Featuring more than 100 photographs made between 1994 and the present, Walker Art Center's exhibition From Here to There: Alec Soth's America includes examples from Soth’s well-known series Sleeping by the Mississippi and Niagara, a selection of rarely seen early black-and-white work, and a broad range of portraits. Also on view is the Minneapolis-based artist’s newest series, Broken Manual, exploring places of escape in and individuals who seek to flee civilization for a life “off the grid.”
Working in a photographic tradition of road photography established by such figures as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Stephen Shore, Soth captures stunning large-scale color images often using a cumbersome 8x10 field camera, with an eye toward finding overlooked beauty in the banal. His curiosity, penchant for research, and openness to serendipity in seeking out subjects have all become hallmarks of his working process. The wanderlust embodied in Soth’s work is an impulse to uncover his own versions of the narratives that comprise the American experience. His images offer insight into broader sociologies while forming an unexpected portrait of the country.
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Alec Soth introduces his career in his own words in this interview for the TV series, MN Original.
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"I wanted to be a painter early on, and then a sculptor and it just turned out to be photography...
When I left college I had to get a job and I worked first at a photo lab, and then later I got a job at a suburban newspaper chain and so I did do some working photography and I also assisted photographers, and in each case it was not satisfying because it's very repetitive, and it sort of sucks the creativity dry...
I eventually got this job at an art museum, and it's very important, I wasn't actually a staff photographer... I worked in there [the darkroom] and then we got rid of the darkroom and I became a digital editing technician, and this I really liked because I'd worked in a lot of darkrooms... I hated the darkroom, so it killed that... I decided I'm never going to be a professional photographer that way... the job came up to be the photographer and I didn't apply for it because I didn't want to kill it...
The leap to be a professional photographer was risky for me, but I had a lot of freedom to say no to things too."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Talk, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
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"Sleeping by the Mississippi... was the first one [project]... that I felt was somehow worthy of more attention or trying to get out of the Twin Cities area...
This work was made over a number of years. It wasn't one long Mississippi trip. It was several as I could piece together time off work and money and that sort of thing...
The work itself is not a documentary of the Mississippi River. If you actually look at the book, there are very few images of the Mississippi... I'm using the Mississippi as a metaphor for wandering and that boyish sort of going with the flow."
—Alec Soth, Interview for MN Original
St. Genevieve, MO| More Info |
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"The analogy I make is, OK we're in a crowded bar right now, which one am I attracted to?...
It's very complicated, but you're attracted to certain types of people... it's not so definable."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
Kym, Polish Palace, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Date: 2000
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 40 1/8 x 50 1/8 in. (101.92 x 127.32 cm)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 2007.109.2
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"This style of photography is so different in that it's not a decisive moment. It's not this frozen action scene when all these elements in the world come together. It's this slowed down, very purposeful encounter.
And more and more I think of this interaction as being the art in a way, and the photograph is a document of that.
But I also like this idea of the process. That you can go out and have these encounters, that you can walk right outside right now and go up to a stranger and say 'I'd like to spend some time with you.'"
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
Patrick, Palm Sunday, Baton Rouge, Louisiana| More Info |
"When I was in Tallahassee, my assistant and I went to this diner, and this picture was made... A big change happened photographically for me... a lot of the pictures in Sleeping by the Mississippi were quite complicated, lots of things happening in them, and I really got tired of that and I started simplifying pictures around this time...
We had time to kill... I'm eating lunch... she walks in with her father... they're eating here... they have piles of fried chickens... you know Southern cooking... I set up my camera... then eventually I realize the father's just kind of a distraction, so I take him out... I thought the food was good but then I realized it wasn't, take the food out...
Ten minutes have passed and she's as bored as she could be... but she has to stay still because the other thing about this camera is that it's a very limited focus area, so you'll notice that her eye is in focus, her shoulder's not. Even her mouth is out of focus so there's a little plane of focus between her eye and this tablecloth... so she's probably falling asleep, but hopefully that's not how you read the picture... you read it as this sort of dreamy picture...
This was a big step for me—simplifying the moment... for me it's part of my theory of portraiture."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
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"With Sleeping by the Mississippi, I did some lighting just to get enough light for the large format camera. More and more I don't like lighting things. It's just something else artificial. So this lighting is actually the dance floor lighting that they had... I try to focus on the eyes. Hopefully every eyeball is sharp in this show.
Every time I photograph I have a revelation which is photography is not the subject. It's the subjects in the light. It's the subjects reflecting light."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
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"One thing that's distinctive, I think, about some of my work is that there's a real mix... I photograph portraits and landscapes and still lives... but it's not documentary, it's not staged... so it's complicated to explain it...
The goal of it is to weave all of these different pictures together in a sort of novelistic way, although it's not a novel... in a novel you have a character, but you don't just look at the character. You look at where they live, you look at their job. I'm trying to show this larger world."
—Alec Soth, Interview for MN Original
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"I looked at a number of photographers that I really love [who] just happened to use this 8x10 camera... and I thought well, it's working for so many of them, there must be something to it...
For me, the real thrill is the viewing experience with this camera because it's like an easel. It's like this painting. You really get to stand back and look at this thing... and even with a 4x5, you're not in it, it's like watching TV upside down...
So I fell in love with that. I mean it drives me crazy too because anything that moves I can't photograph, and also it's getting attached to me as this thing that I do, so it gets annoying. I'm capable of working in other ways."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
The Farm, Angola State Prison, Louisiana
Date: 2002
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 16 1/8 x 20 in. (40.96 x 50.8 cm) (image)20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 60.96 cm) (sheet)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 2002.278
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"There is a distance there. To me, it's often a picture of the space between us. I had one curatorial-type person ask me, you know, "What's the point of a portrait anyway, especially, like, a head-shot... you learn so little about the other person."
And I think in a way that's true, but you're learning about your own reaction to the other person, and you learn something about the space between you and the world.
So this camera really emphasizes that quality for me... And one of the qualities of this camera is that because you're under this dark cloth, they don't see you and they don't see you looking right into their eyes, because generally, that's the first thing I focus on... so they become less self-conscious, in a way, than if I'm holding a camera up to my face."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
Joshua, Angola State Prison, Louisiana
Date: 2002
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 40 1/8 x 50 1/8 in. (101.92 x 127.32 cm)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 2007.112.3
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"I had a big show... that was called The Space Between Us and I came up with that name because I always say that I'm not photographing the other person, I'm photographing the space that exists between myself and that other person.
When it takes this time, they move into their own little world, and I'm under the cover... I'm in my space... and I like to feel... in playing with this focus... I like to feel how they're over there and I'm over here."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
Misty| More Info |
"For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself. "
- Alec Soth, Artist Statement, National Portrait Gallery
Charles Lindbergh's boyhood bed, Little Falls, Minnesota| More Info |
"I'm not a purist photographer... I'm happy to move all these things... it's more of a matter of stopping things when I see it... I really don't like too much banter back and forth... and I don't like too much direction... it's a slow process."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
Immaculate Conception Church, Kaskaskia, Illinois| More Info |
"Now I'm much better at knowing what I want and controlling it... I've learned all sorts of tricks to getting a good picture when there's not one there, but it's cheating because it's not real—it's fake, and that can be a little soul-killing if you do too much of it."
Jim, Wax Museum, Hannibal, Missouri
Date: 2002
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 50 1/8 x 40 1/8 in. (127.32 x 101.92 cm)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 2007.112.4
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"I'm willing to crop, but the pictures are so slowly made that I just do all of the cropping in the camera, for the most part... Photography for me is the art of editing. It's as much about what you leave out as what you put in... this sort of ongoing battle for me is how much information to give people, how much of a story to tell, and it's something I'm constantly struggling with."
—Alec Soth, Gallery Lecture, National Portrait Gallery, 2009
New Orleans, LA
Date: 2002
Medium: Photographs
Size: sheet 40 x 50 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center
Accession #: 2003.34
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"A critic once pointed out to me the different ways in which I photograph men and women. With men I seem to be poking fun, he said, whereas my depiction of women is more reverent. He makes a good point. Many of my best pictures of men are playful (a man in a flight suit holding model airplanes, a shirtless man with carrots in his ears)."
—Alec Soth, Artist Statement, National Portrait Gallery
Charles, Vasa, Minnesota
Date: 2002
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 50 1/8 x 40 1/8 in. (127.32 x 101.92 cm)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 2007.110.2
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"But the women I photograph look more like saints than clowns. As a man, I suppose, I identify more with my male subjects. In them, I see my own awkwardness and frailty. Women are always “the other.”... In putting together a collection of my best portraits of women, I’m trying to come to terms with how I honestly see and depict women. Are my pictures romanticized? Sexualized? Why do I see women in this way?"
—Alec Soth, Artist Statement, National Portrait Gallery
Adelyn, Ash Wednesday, New Orleans, Louisiana| More Info |
"In assembling this group of portraits of women, I’m aware that I’m treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men’s depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand’s book Women Are Beautiful in the school library and being shocked that it hadn’t been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest."
—Alec Soth, Artist Statement, National Portrait Gallery
Mother and Daughter, Davenport, Iowa
Date: 2002
Medium: Photographs, Photograph
Size: 50 1/8 x 40 1/8 in. (127.32 x 101.92 cm)
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Accession #: 2007.110.7
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"The thing about the art world is that it’s very fashion-based... things come in fashion and out of fashion, and I know that I had this moment... where I was in fashion, and I’ve been able to sustain it by [having] a lot of different things going on simultaneously. So I’m not just in the art world, I also do... magazine photography. I also do teaching. I do all these little things."
—Alec Soth, Interview for MN Original
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In 2010, Soth presented a series of short videos about his travels in America called “Continental Picture Show,” for the New York Times online feature blog, the Opinionator.
In the first installment, "Ash Wednesday, New Orleans" the photographer Alec Soth explores cycles of sin and redemption in the aftermath of Mardi Gras.
Click on the link below to view the video piece.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/ash-wednesday-new-orleans/
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In the second part of the Continental Picture Show series, Alec Soth sets out to take a worthy photograph for a 114-year-old Iowan.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/iowa-bird-story/
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In the third part of the Continental Picture Show series, Alec Soth rents a metal detector, and sets out to find what others have lost.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/california-treasure-hunt/
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In this installment of the Continental Picture Show series, Alec Soth tests his fortune among bingo players and lottery hopefuls.
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The following resources can be used for further research and learning about Alec Soth.
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Click here to watch the Alec Soth segment from Twin Cities Public Television program MN Original.
Go the MN Original website for a lesson based on the work of Alec Soth.
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Alec Soth: Portraits
Exhibition Essay: Alec Soth: Portraits
From Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
by Cynde Randall
The extraordinary photographs of Alec Soth testify to the gifts of a great artist. Soth’s remarkable eye – his perceptual and psychological discernment - is super-charged. Born in 1969, Soth’s work extends the formidable tradition of personal documentary photography made manifest by earlier greats such as Robert Frank and William Eggleston.
While portrait work has been at the core of Soth’s artistic inquiry, it is significant that he is not limited or defined by any particular subject. He moves easily across conventional lines, making powerful pictures of people, animals, domestic interiors, cityscapes and landscapes. And while his most recent photographs come to being through large-format equipment, he also employs medium square format cameras and digital technology.
Soth’s rise to critical acclaim can be traced through a breathtaking constellation of recent achievements: his photographic quest along the small towns and byways of the Mississippi to create his epic series called “Sleeping by the Mississippi”; a book published (2004) by the German publisher Steidl featuring large-format Chromogenic color prints of the series; with selected works from “Sleeping” featured in both the 2004 Whitney and the Sao Paolo Biennials.
Today, Soth is a Magnum nominee who works on regular assignment for publications like the New York Times, Life, and Fortune. He exhibits his independent projects nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at Pace MacGill in New York, at Wohnmaschine in Berlin, Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Santiago de Chile.
Soth’s latest work - a stunning array of never before published large-format color portraits – are featured in “Alec Soth: Portraits,” an exhibition, presented by the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from March 4 through May 1, 2005. The portraits are drawn from all walks of Soth’s artistic life – from Magnum editorial assignments, private commission work, personal projects including “From Here to There”, “Sleeping by the Mississippi” and “Love in Niagara” and as discrete images gathered during art-related travel. His subjects include everyday strangers to celebrated authors and artists who Soth has encountered throughout the U.S. and on recent travels to Iceland, Germany, Canada, Brazil, China and the U.K.
Much has been said about the transparency of the straight photograph or the idea that the photographic image could never exist were it not for the referent object bouncing light back to the camera. But for Soth the photograph is the record of the space between the subject and himself. This is a more participatory definition of photography, wherein the identity of the photographer is apriori to the photograph.
Soth is most interested in shooting what is new to him. Rarely does he photograph friends, family or familiar surroundings. Soth’s vision is driven by curiosity. He credits the solitude of his wandering for heightening his awareness – for his ability to spot the right person, even in a crowd. On a recent assignment in China, Soth waited at the entrance of a subway. “I probably watched 500 people pass by the tunnel entrance. I knew the instant that I saw this one young man that I wanted to take his portrait,” Says Soth.
Soth describes the experience of meeting Odessa (Odessa, Joelton, TN, 2004) while on assignment for Life magazine in Tennessee: “Odessa was visiting her boyfriend while he played war games in Joelton. I was attracted to her the second I saw her. The attraction is not unlike falling in love at first sight. It is a physical, not cognitive reaction. I became interested in the “idea” of her. Soth wondered what her story was. “But this isn’t the point. I’m interested in the beauty of the mystery. I’m standing here; she’s standing there. In the space between there is a gulf, a mystery, and for me, an attraction.” This is what Soth seeks to behold and to capture. It is this invisible gulf (the space that connects us, holding everthing together) that charges Soth’s work.
Soth is so facile at getting the psychological read of his subjects, his pictures also evoke interior landscapes - places filled with creative longing, determination, or brooding loneliness. In “Sydney, Tallahassee, FL” 2004 Soth presents a dreamy, timeless picture of a little girl with pink hair, resting her head while she waits for the session to end. The girl’s haunting eyes, wise beyond their years, are poised above a blue tablecloth that reads as much like a surreal landscape. Like an archetypal child, Sydney embodies so much that we don’t need to know that she is dressed for Halloween - she could be from the past as much as the future. It doesn’t matter, because we are suspended there with her. Pictures like this inspire us to consider that Soth’s photographs are the outward signs of inward grace, a revelation of the subject’s soul, unfettered by culture or time.
Certainly Soth’s old-fashioned 8” x 10” camera plays a role in shaping his subjects experience with him. Physically cumbersome, requisite in its complexity, the large-format camera slows down time. Indeed, Soth may be under the camera cloth for a good twenty minutes setting up the shot. “I can really stare at people under that cloth,” says Soth. As Soth lingers over the image in the lens, his subjects relax - letting go of any initial need to perform, they become fully incarnate, as themselves.
Considering himself to be the protagonist in this process, Soth likens his work to that of Andy Goldsworthy. Like the famous earthwork artist, Soth arranges the temporary contextual elements until the right relationship between things is established. The New York Times Magazine recently hired Soth to photograph Goldsowothy while he worked on a commission for the rooftop of the Metropolitan Muesum of Art. Soth photographed him while he prepared for the project in Ithaca and during the installation in New York City. “The first day I met with Goldsworthy, he produced this temporary sculpture with icicles. Since this really had nothing to do with the commission, the image wasn’t used in the story. But I think this practice of making small, temporary sculptures is closer to the heart of Goldsworthy’s work. For me, photography is also about this very fleeting moment. With portraiture, you have this brief time with a subject, sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, but it is always brief. Inevitably you are battling the weather, the time of day, the mood etc. You scurry around trying to make the thing, snap the shutter, and it all begins to dissipate. It is profoundly temporal. And the photograph serves as a document of this encounter,” says Soth.
Soth’s most humorous portrait features Boris Mikhailov. “While in Berlin, I tracked down Boris, the great and gritty Russian photographer, who now lives in Berlin. One of things I love about Boris is that he exposes himself on film (both literally and figuratively.) Of course, it was different when he posed for me. At first he was reluctant. But then he took off his shirt and pressed his skin to show me his pacemaker. But he seemed most himself when he stuck the carrots in his ears.”
Soth’s uncanny ability to connect with strangers, even people who do not share his language, is well evident in “Boy with Flowers, Beijing, 2004” and in “Allesandra, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2004”. Soth captures the strength of adolescent sexual power in “Young Woman, Beijing, 2004” a remarkable picture of an alluring but defiant young woman whose ensemble - black laced boots, halter top, denim hotpants, and orange belt slung low on her hips – makes a stunning play off of the black rabbit fencing behind her that supports two climbing roses in peak bloom, their magenta flowers floating like a halo around her head.
Of the many interesting characters that Soth encountered on his magical journey along the Mississippi, “Peter, Winona, 2002,” is one of three never-before- published portraits featured in the current exhibition. “While working on Sleeping by the Mississippi, I would often ask people to describe their dream. I would have them write this down on a sheet of paper. Peter is an artist who has been living on a houseboat on the Mississippi for 25 years (a picture of his houseboat is one of the signature images in Sleeping by the Mississippi).While most of the people I photographed wrote their dream down on a white sheet of paper, Peter found a big poster to write on. Like a good photograph, his dream is both incredibly concrete (running water) and simultaneously poetic”.
Alec Soth sees what most people do not. Happily for us he makes an enduring gift of his vision, giving witness to the beauty and complexity of human interactions. We perceive ourselves in his art. The space between our selves and the photograph resonates with our recognition. In this triangle we are no more (or less) lonely, tragic or heroic or than any of Soth’s subjects.
Cynde Randall is an artist and program associate for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program, an artist-run curatorial department of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts made possible by generous support from the Jerome Foundation.
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This gallery talk at the National Portrait Gallery is a detailed discussion of Soth's portraits.
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Photographer Alec Soth's lyric documentation of life along the Mississippi leaves his audience feeling as though they have just paged through a strange yet beautiful dream. Of the book Sleeping by the Mississippi, writer/NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu says, "[He has] the decency (or affection) to disturb none of his subjects, through he disturbed me, a viewer, plenty." From their respective posts at either end of the waterway, Minneapolis-based Soth and New Orleans-based Codrescu come together for an illustrated conversation on the narratives found along the banks of the Mississippi and other stories of America's Great River Road. The evening concludes with a presentation of Soth's current pictorial investigation of Niagara Falls.
Artist: Walker Channel
Date: July 14, 2005
Medium: Artist Talk
Institution: Walker Art Center
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The following two lessons are my take on how to include Mr. Soth's work, as well as the Flckr website into my Photography class. -- Gerard Kulzer, Litchfield High School, MN
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