Ideas/ Phantasm/Narrative - Alec Soth

Alec Soth
Photographer/Narrator
Rebeka Schmieder 

Alec Soth is a photographic storyteller. His work focuses on the human condition and specifically, American culture. Soth is a Magnum photographer, using his skills as a photojournalist and artist creates  books. When working on book projects, he collaborates with writers to give a text narrative to accompany the photographs. He has published over 25 photograpic artists' books in his career. In addition, has had more than 50 solo-exhibitions in his hometown, Minnesota and internationally, including Paris and London. In 2013 he earned Guggenheim Fellowship. Soth most recently created a multi-media enterprise, Little Brown Mushroom, focused on visual story telling. 

Front Cover of Songbook 

Songbook is Soth's most recent artist book. It is a collection of photographs that he has taken over the years working for news magazines. In this iteration, however, he has given these images a new meaning. For the first time, Soth did not provide text to go along with the images with the intention of  testing the photo's functionality without text to explain them. Instead, he forces the viewer to imagine the story. The viewer becomes the story teller, but he has provided the images and sequence. In other words, he has provided the basis for a great story, or many stories.

These photos have a rhythm built into the sequential pattern of the book. Some have a musical overturn to it. This is why he says he sees this book as a melodic play. This book is wide open for interpretation and can have multiple meanings depending on the viewer. Each photo is intimate and accentuates the personality of the person portrayed. 

Soth sees photography as a medium of separation. He wants to bridge that gap, but also maintain the medium as a separation from photograph and viewer.