Regarded as one of the world’s
leading art photographers, the American Alec Soth takes on major projects,
often lasting for years, documenting the “American Way”. His work captures
aspects of the open road, the vast landscapes of his home country and, most
importantly, the lengths and breadths of humanity.
This retrospective captures work
from four of his major projects: “Sleeping by the Missisippi” (2004), “Niagara”
(2006), “Broken Manual” (2010) and his most recent endeavour, “Songbook” (2015).
Additional to his printed photographs are notes and memorabilia relating to
these projects and a film that narrates the journey that he took to produce
“Broken Manual”.
The exhibition is curated to
chronicle his four major works, in the order that they were produced. Soth uses
a large format camera and I was immediately struck by the wealth of detail that
was captured in his prints. He appears to be equally comfortable in a wide range
of genres although people, of all types, dominate his work. “Sleeping by the
Missisippi” takes Soth on a 2,000 mile road (or river) trip along the “Big
Muddy”, seeking out interesting human characters along the way. “Niagara” takes
an in-depth look at a place of “spectacular suicides and affordable
honeymoons”. Thankfully, far more of the latter than of the former are present
in his story. The photos speak of a hotch-potch of ways of life, being
reminiscent to me of the work of Robert Frank and Martin Parr.
For me the exhibition really came
to life when viewing the photographs from “Broken Manual”. Here, Soth took off
to search for hermits, recluses and lone survivalists within the vast American
wilderness. His subjects ranged from the harmless to the psychopathic and he
clearly needed to have his wits about him to survive one or two events with his
camera intact and photographs “in the bag”. His experiences during the production
of this project were graphically illustrated by a captivating film that was
playing on a loop just outside the “Media Space” gallery. The film gave
considerable insight into the methods that Soth uses to create his images and
was, for me, the highlight of the exhibition. Some of the photographs of the
recluses, in the wilderness environment, were also memorable (for example, see
Image 1).
Image 1 (Alec Soth)
The exhibition concludes with
images from Soth’s recently completed project, “Songbook”. Travelling with
writer Brad Zellar in the guises of a photographer and journalist working for a
suburban newspaper, the pair visited four states looking for stories with a
nostalgic feel. Many of the resulting portraits are of older people, living out
their lives as they have done for years, unchanged in a world dominated today
by social media. The nostalgia is heightened by Soth’s use of monochrome, which
works really well. The title of his work refers to the American Songbook, a
loose collection of musical works from the times of Irving Berlin and Cole
Porter, and the work is intended to have a corresponding rhythm. To some extent
the images speak of the slow death of community in modern day America and there
is a sense of pathos about many of them, but there is also humour. Occasionally
the rhythm is broken by something more upbeat, such as the aerial shot of a man
walking across the courtyard at the Facebook headquarters (Image 2), a rather
ironic nod to the present in the context of the rest of his work, but a
stand-out image in its own right.
Image 2 (Alec Soth)
Alec Soth’s images provide a
beguiling and reflective look at small town America and its inhabitants. Whilst
his technical mastery of the medium of photography is obvious it is the way
that his images can, as a set, provoke feelings such as a sense of pathos,
disquiet and sadness that sets him apart from other photographers. The use of
film to show how he went about producing the images for one of his projects,
“Broken Manual”, offers a rewarding, if rather worrying insight into how a
master photographer goes about creating his images.
In order to understand how to
produce individual or sets of images that create atmosphere and produce emotion
I could learn a lot by studying the output of Alec Soth in greater detail. This
exhibition gives a very good insight into his work.
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