Exploring Photographic Practice: Assignment 1

1. Exploring Photographic Practice: Assignment 1 Alec Soth

2. Biography • Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. • His photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and São Paulo Biennials. • In 2008, a large survey exhibition of Soth’s work was exhibited at Jeu de Paume in Paris and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. • In 2008, Soth started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom.

3. Photographic Approach/Tradition • The work of Alec Soth has often been associated with the American tradition of ‘on the road photography’, developed by photographers such as Stephen Shore and Robert Frank. This concept reflects a desire to travel and document the adventures that consequently ensue. • This often involves “large-scale American projects” featuring the mid western United States. Much of his photography has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore implying a story behind the images. • Soth, in regards to his photographic projects: "I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance." • According to The Guardian art critic Hannah Booth,his work tends to focus on the "off-beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America“. • In addition to this, New York Times art critic Hilarie M. Sheets wrote that he has made a "photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers" and photographs "loners and dreamers".

4. How he produces work, equipment and techniques. • Soth has expressed when taking photographs of people, he becomes nervous, “awkwardness comforts people, I think. It’s part of the exchange”. As a result, he is able to document honest characterised reactions. • When he was on the road, he'd have notes describing types of pictures he wanted taped to the steering wheel of his car. One list was: "beards, birdwatchers, mushroom hunters, men’s retreats, after the rain, figures from behind, suitcases, tall people (especially skinny), targets, tents, treehouses and tree lines. • With people, he'll ask their permission to photograph them, and often wait for them to get comfortable; he sometimes uses an 8x10 camera. From this, he tries to find a "narrative arc and true storytelling" and pictures in which each picture will lead to the next one.

5. Published work: Books. • His first book, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004. This included landscapes and portraits taken around the Mississippi River. • His second book, Niagara, was published in 2006. One of his photos is of a woman in a bridal gown sitting outside what appears to be a motel; he describes having made an arrangement with a particular wedding chapel in Niagara Falls which let him take pictures of couples getting married, by photographing them after their weddings. • Soth made several more photographic books including Last Days of W, a book about a country "exhausted by George W Bush’s presidency" • Soth, along with writer Lester B. Morrison, created Broken Manual over four years (2006-2010) an underground instruction manual for those looking to escape their lives. He investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization, for which he photographed monks, survivalists, hermits and runaways. • Soth concurrently produced the photo book From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America an overview of his photography from the early 1990s to the present.

6. Published work: Galleries Galerie Friedrich Loock, Berlin Germany; "Alec Soth: Broken Moments" (June 10 - July 23, 2011) Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN. USA) "Alec Soth: From here to there" (September 12 – January 2, 2011) High Museum of art (Atlanta, Ga. USA) "Alec Soth: Black line of woods" (August 8 - Jan 3, 2010) Weinstein Gallery (Minneapolis, MN, USA), "Alec Soth: Niagara" (April 7 - June 10, 2006) Wohnmaschine (Berlin, Germany), "Alec Soth - Niagara" (March 24 - April 29, 2006) Gagosian Gallery (New York, New York, USA), "Alec Soth 'Niagara'" (January 21 - February 25, 2006) Gagosian Gallery (New York, New York, USA), "Roger Ballen, Alec Soth and Vera Lutter" (June 4 - July 29, 2005) Stephen Wirtz Gallery (San Francisco, CA, USA), "Alec Soth 'Sleeping by the Mississippi'" (June 2 - July 24, 2004) Yossi Milo Gallery (New York, New York, USA), "Alec Soth 'Sleeping by the Mississippi'" (March 12 - April 24, 2004)

7. Examples of Photographic Work Sleeping by the Mississippi, 2004

8. Examples of Photographic Work Fashion Magazine, 2007

9. Examples of Photographic Work Last Days of W, 2008