Alec Soth: Sleeping by the Mississippi

Alec Soth is an American photographer based in Minneapolis who is best known for his banal images of modern America.  He is famous for his large-scale projects from central America: Sleeping by the Mississippi and Niagara.  The photographs from these bodies of work range from portraits to bleak landscapes in the tradition of road photography made famous by the likes of Stephen Shore and Walker Evans. (Booth, Guardian, 2010)

I am interested in his Sleeping by the Mississippi work as an inspiration for my body of work on The River Witham.  In an interview by Aaron Schuman for Seesaw online photography magazine, Schuman suggests that this project he is trying to get away from overt sequencing and away from any clear narrative.  He wonders if the viewer is meant to put the pieces together in their own way.  He asks Soth if he prefers the images to looked at as a whole or as separate individual images.  In his reply Soth stresses that the work should be treated as a whole.  I feels that anyone can take a 'good' picture by accident, but very few people can put together a great collection of images. (Schuman, Seesaw, 2004)  Although the work contains images of some of the most colourful characters he finds, Soth is not happy with it being regarded as he was trying to suggest that it was more internal and dream-like.  Although it has documentary characteristics, there are too many gaps for it to be documentary.  He created his own vision of the river and other photographers would create a different vision. (Schuman, Seesaw, 2004)

One of the main things that interests me about this project is that many of the images do not feature the river at all.  This is unlike my work for Assignment 2, where the river features in every shot and is perhaps more narrative, documentary.  One of the aspects of the Witham that has struck me is the way it was regarded as a sacred river by the Iron Age Celts and, for similar reasons later in history, a whole series of abbeys were built in the Witham valley.  In the same way that Alec Soth has photographed the river with few actual images of it, I am inspired me to develop my body of work by leaving the Witham itself and photographing the ruins and earthworks of the abbeys in a link with the River's once sacred nature.

Booth, H. (2010) The Genius Behind Alec Soth's Brighton Biennial Success [online] The Guardian Website.  Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/sep/19/alec-carmen-soth-brighton-biennial [Accessed 26.10.15]

Schuman, A. (2004) The Mississippi: an interview with Alec Soth [online] Seesaw Online Photography Magazine.  Available from http://www.seesawmagazine.com/soth_pages/soth_interview.html [Accessed 26.10.15]