Known for his haunting portraits of solitary Americans in ‘Sleeping by the Mississippi’ and ‘Broken Manual’, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens toward community life in the United States.
“Songbook”, an exhibition of the new black and white photographs by internationally celebrated photographer Alec Soth.
Known for his haunting portraits of solitary Americans in “Sleeping by the Mississippi” and “Broken Manual”, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens toward community life in the United States. Over the course of three years, Soth, accompanied by writer Brad Zellar, set out from Minneapolis, Minnesota as a pretend small-town reporter for the self-published newspaper “LBM Dispatch”. In the spirit of W. Eugene Smith and other Life Magazine photojournalists from the 1940 s and 1950 s, he traveled to specific areas across the United States for weeks at a time, photographing the people, topography, and local history. With Songbook, Soth has stripped these pictures of their news context in order to highlight the longing for connection at their root. Fragmentary, funny, and sad, Songbook is a lyrical depiction of the tension between American individualism and the ongoing desire to be united.
Ale c S ot h ( b. 1 9 6 9 ) i s a p h oto g ra p h e r b o r n a n d b a s e d i n M i n n e a p o l i s, M i n n e s ot a . H i s photographs have been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and Sao Paulo Biennials. In 2008, a large survey of Soth’s work was exhibited at Jeu de Paume in Paris and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. In 2010, the Walker Art Center produced a comprehensive exhibition of Soth’s work entitled From Here to There. His first monograph, “Sleeping by the Mississippi”, and his numerous subsequent publications have received critical acclaim and book awards. Soth has been the recipient of multiple fellowships a n d awa rd s, i n c l u d i n g t h e G u g ge n h e i m Fe l lows h i p ( 2 0 1 3 ). H i s wo r k i s i n c l u d e d i n t h e permanent collections of distinguished museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Image: Alec Soth, Brian. Williston, North Dakota, 2013, archival pigment print, 112cm x 137cm, Copyright Alec Soth / MagnumPhotos / Agentur Focus, Courtesy Loock Galerie
Opening: Thursday, April 30, 7pm-9pm
Loock Galerie
Potsdamer Strasse 63
Tue – Sat 11am to 6pm
ALEC SOTH
dal 30 aprile al 6 giugno 2015
