Soth like Both

Alec Soth has taken over the photo world in the cities and I’m frankly sick of it. Every museum or gallery I have been to since I’ve moved here has had some of his work in it and it’s starting to become cliché. When I first saw Soth at the Weinstein gallery, I already knew that he was a hit and I didn’t know why. Comparing him to Mapplethorpe, I thought he wasn’t anything special. In fact, I didn’t see much of anything in his work. I was wrong. When visiting the Walker Art Center I heard that Soth had an exhibit showing. I decided that I should peruse it and see if I could finally figure out what the hype was all about. Alec Soth isn’t just a photographer. He’s a narrator and a story teller, if those two things aren’t already the same.

The difference between this exhibit and the others I had seen with Soth in them, is that Soth’s work was displayed by itself and much fuller. I saw a lot more of his work and was able to make some sense of them instead of comparing him to the other photographers around him. His exhibit is multi-roomed that contains all wall spaces filled with photos, some sculptural objects related to his work and even a video recording explaining some of his works. All of his photos were large, chromogenic prints, and sometimes he interlaced them with hand-written notes that help create captions and stories for his art.

There isn’t just one photo that I appreciated or found something that I enjoyed. To start, Soth has so many photos that span across the Midwest and any other parts of our country and Canada that you can’t help but to find something to recognize. When looking at a couple of girls from Davenport Iowa, in a picture called Mother and Daughter, I tried and felt like I had some connection. I knew nothing about these two girls, but since I’m from Iowa and I know their type, or at least I think I know their type, I have a connection. Since Soth is taking pictures of ordinary people in familiar places, we have a connection to the people. Seeing them in a museum setting brings a feeling of importance to the viewer since they know the person, or at least their origin.

Not only can I get a strong connection to Soth’s photos but allow for so much imagination with his photography. The majority of his photos have one small caption or just the title that give just enough information to form your own ideas about it. In one particular photograph he leaves it devoid of any title or caption. This is a picture of a lumberjack looking man with red hair sleeping on a log in the forest. There is so much to be interpreted here. In an article I later read about this exhibit, Soth states that he wants some of his photos to be interpreted. Apparently this man he met in a monastery, although he wasn’t a monk. He wants the viewer though to come up with their idea of who this man is. Soth states he looks like a leprechaun, but I think he looks like a fairytale lumber jack, like Paul Bunyan or somebody. As art states too, I can’t be wrong.

One of the photos I remember from the Weinstein was a picture of a balding, middle-aged man sitting in a living room in front of a fire holding a birthday cake. Sitting next to him on the ground is a woman, barely dressed in a swimsuit, very obviously a stripper. When I visited the Walker, my thirst for the story there was finally quenched. When visiting Missouri, Soth attempted to find the loneliest man. He found many interesting subjects, but this guy topped them all. Spending 5 days a week at a strip club, Soth took him out to eat. He finds out that his birthday is the next day and none of his family or friends are alive to celebrate it. Soth buys this stripper and you see the results in the Walker Art Center. What a crazy story! This kind of realistic story-telling feeds into people’s need for imagination.

The greatest achievement that Soth has under his belt is the personality of the people he takes portraits of. Soth’s portraits very obviously tell something about who the person is. Their pose is not contrived; it’s something that exists in their real lives. How does Soth capture this though? A photographer must get to know the people or person before he can take a picture that captures so much personality. It’s beautiful and powerful, but I wonder how he does it? How does he establish that strange relationship between stranger photographer and ordinary person? How long does it take for that relationship to flourish enough to produce the picture? In the instance of the Mother and Daughter in St. Paul, their picture was taken in the parking lot of a K-Mart. Not much time must have been given, and yet this picture is very believable.

Soth’s photos have so much going on. I feel almost foolish for dismissing it so quickly. The imagination, the true portrait, and the raw story create some of the best photography I have seen in a long time. This is the kind of picture that I can relate to and the kind that I want to take for myself. The question is, how do I go about it?