14 April 2014

For some time now Alec Soth has been seen as an artist worthy of the retrospective, celebrated by many as one of the true heirs of the great American tradition of documentary photography. The exhibition Until Now presents photographs taken over the course of sixteen years and seven books: from the lyrical journey through the landscape of Sleeping by the Mississippi, in which he pays homage to the land of his birth with large format color pictures, to Broken Manual, where in a sort of personal photographic 8½ Soth explores some of the places where American hermits live, interspersed with pages giving lessons on how to vanish from civilized life. All in a mix of color, black and white, landscape and still life as if he were searching for a new identity by taking his language in every direction possible. The two books are separated by many years and a multitude of photographs in which the artist has tried to unite the different lessons of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, combining the former’s topographic investigation of the places of daily life with the latter’s “democratic forest” and accumulating the many fragments of which existence is made up: the endless list of finds made by Soth on his numerous journeys by car through the United States.

Alec Soth, Until Now
Weinstein Gallery
Minneapolis
March 21-May 10

Alec Soth, Adelyn, Ash Wednesday, New Orleans, LA, 2000.

Alec Soth, Charles Lindbergh’s Boyhood Bed, Little Falls, MN, 1999.

Alec Soth, LL: Would You Come Home?, 2005.

Alec Soth, Falls 02, 2005.

Alec Soth, Home, Treasure Island Casino, Red Wing, MN, 2002.

Alec Soth, Untitled 25, Bogotá (broken glass wall), 2003.

Alec Soth, Untitled 26, Bogotá (girl with doll), 2003.

Alec Soth, 2008_08zL0047 (horse and bus), 2008.

Alec Soth, Michelle, Rome, 2011.