Alec Soth's Manipulating Eye
- Michael Fallon

If looked at in a certain light, nearly anyone can be beautiful. I learned this last August on a hot Monday afternoon while in the company of Minneapolis artist Alec Soth at a bar in the dingiest hinterlands of Northeast Minneapolis. That's how even Dave--the ageless, marble-mouthed guy who is listing like a schooner too long on the high seas, despite the fact that it's only three in the afternoon--comes to seem beautiful to me. We had come to track down subjects for Soth's camera, a breadbox-sized R.H. Phillips and Sons 8x10 Compact camera from the late 1980s that makes gorgeous, diamond-edged, almost painting-like pictures. Dave was spouting a tale of sorrow about his buddy Mike, "one of the great ones," who died a few days ago of a heart attack. He showed us a photo of a fiftyish guy kneeling in a yard next to a spaniel.
"Not too many showed up," Dave mumbled, speaking of the funeral. "Only three guys there that we worked with."
Soth had led us to the corner of this long, pockmarked wooden bar because a lonesome-looking, 47-year-old, dark-haired drinker named John had caught his eye when he peeked in. Dave was a momentary distraction.
"What's your story?" Soth asked John as soon as Dave fell quiet and we ordered drinks. John told his story. He's a builder, off early for the day from a job. He has a cabin he's building in the North woods and someday he plans to retire there. "I want to get up there and replant a lot of the trees," he said.
"That's a real good story," Soth replied. "Can I tell you my story? I'm a photographer…I'm drawn to dreamer types--people who dream big. Something told me you were a dreamer." Soth asked if he could take John's picture. And finding out John lived nearby, Soth further asked: "Can we go to your house?...I'll buy you another one of these."
And despite himself, just like that, John was poised to agree to something he probably had never considered doing before--exposing his life to the artist's sharp eye.
I should explain something about Alec Soth: He not just some photographer. He's actually an open-faced, warmly smiling, 33-year-old confidence-man operator/artist who works his way into unusual situations and then works the situation to get exactly what he wants. This includes a Memphis prostitute's room, the Angola State prison, an aging Southern matron's bedroom, and numerous other situations. He simply enters into these people’s lives momentarily and pries surprising elements of beauty from them.
As an artist, Soth has traveled far afield in search of these strange beauties: Bogota, Colombia; Iceland; and most recently down the Mississippi River to make a series of images called "Sleeping by the Mississippi." It's this body of work that has recently garnered the attention of the national art corps. He’s had solo exhibitions in the past few months at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and at Washington University in St. Louis. Earlier in 2003, he won the Sante Fe Prize in photography. Recently, he was included on the roster of young artists to be shown in the upcoming 2004 Whitney biennial, and Steidl Publishing announced it would publish a book of these photos in the coming year.
"['Sleeping by the Mississippi'] is my first truly substantial body of work," said Soth. "I think of the process as akin to filmmaking. The big camera, the slowness of the process, the fundraising, the shooting, then the post-production and all that. A lot of effort goes into one picture. At $15 an exposure, you can't just do it willy nilly."
Soth’s process of photographing is almost unnecessarily complicated, and reliant both on fortuity and the artist’s control-freak nature. This may simply follow the complicated and nebulous process of using the large-format camera, a device that must be reconstructed anew on each use from a variety of parts, and that uses large and expensive negatives that slide into the back. Further, the camera’s lens is particularly sensitive to variations in light and has a shallow field of focus that causes much fussiness in the artist. Soth says he’s lucky if he manages to make one or two exposures on a given day of shooting. This is, of course, very different from the photographic norm in the load-and-shoot era of 35mm and digital cameras.
"That's the whole game," he said, laughing. "I drive around and look for something that catches my curiosity, and I follow up on it. And that usually leads to something.…It's really an enjoyable, improvisational kind of game."
You can see the effect of Soth’s manipulations in various of the “Sleeping by the Mississippi” images. For instance, one, called "Cemetary, Fountain City, WI," is a frigid blue and white winter landscape. A steep and hairy hill rises in the background behind a convenience store gas pump awning in the foreground. The awning’s lights glow crystalline-white and draw our attention away from the beast-like hill. The cemetary appears almost as an afterthought, three-quarters down the hill beneath dark scraggly trees. Here, Soth works as a patient vulture, coaxing the perfect light and perfect composition the basic to bring a sense of eerie coldness to this otherwise mundane scene.
"Kym, Polish Palace, Minneapolis, MN," meanwhile, is nearly opposite to the above outdoor tour de force. It is a quiet indoor bar portrait of a solitary woman, presumably Kym, seated in a red and pink setting. She sits in a red vinyl bar booth. The walls glow red from the reflection off the vinyl, as does the side of Kym’s face. Cutout red and pink Valentine's Day hearts are pasted on the wall over her shoulder. Even the two drinks in front of the woman fit the theme--one is red, one pink. You just know nothing is here by accident. In this image, Soth tells a story in the manner of documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who is known for manipulating and controlling every aspect of his films, raising questions about what is the nature of reality and truth.
Another image, "Green Island, IA", depicts a hospital bed with a gurney hanging over the iron bedpost. The room is drab and bare but for the bed, an old TV, an AC unit under slat blinds, and, tellingly propped against the door, a broom. The composition of the scene is condensed, showing signs of Soth's handiwork--his willingness to physically rearrange his scenes to suit his photographic needs. The bed in an awkward position--askew against a corner of the room, obviously not the place the bed ordinarily rests. But this makes the scene work. The colors of the plain white sheet on the bed play against the white-gray walls. The yellow trim of the baseboards highlights the yellow broom. The TV is a poignant bull’s-eye in the center of the image. And the whole scene is pulled together by the white and yellow light coming in from the window
The images exist not just a solitary moments; they also exist serially—so we begin to get a sense of the artist’s preoccupations and obsessions. There are a lot of interiors of dilapidated apartments, of flophouses and sick rooms, of bedrooms and beds. There are prostitutes in their rooms, prisoners at the Angola State Prison. These are people Soth has met on his travels, in bars or at bus stations. Figures ready not only to be documented, but ready implicitly to have their lives momentarily halted, rearranged, and manipulated by the artist for his own purposes, to suit his own subjective vision. Among the most remarkable of these images is "Herman's Bed, Kenner, LA." This is a shot of a red-blanketed bed in a short-ceilinged, very compact room. The walls of the room are completely covered in beads, holiday lights, tinsel, religious icons, and other shiny and colorful objects. In this image, we get a complete sense of what it must have been like for the artist to discover an amazing scene that suits his sense of the world.
Back at the bar in Minneapolis, two hours pass and the rising timbre of men’s voices slowly drowns out the rockin’ blues on the stereo. At our corner of the bar the subject of the neighborhood comes up, and everyone expresses disgust at what's happened over the years. "Drug dealers are everywhere," says John, then laughs, "and they won't even sell to me." John and Dave turn to talking about some of the old crowd who used to live here, and grow sullen that so many are no longer with us.
"They're all dyin'," says Dave, "and I'm still living."
Soth brings conversation back to the house, subtly but repeatedly. John, however, is not to be rushed. He drinks six double screwdrivers and hardly seems affected; he's been doing this for 30 years, he says. His face does grow slightly more somber, though. "I never really knew where I wanted to go. The world to me feels depressing. I'm working on million dollar homes. To me, it's just absurd. I don't understand where the souls of people are anymore."

John's house, when we finally get there, looks as it must have in 1954 when his parents bought it. Soth comments on the vintage green carpet downstairs and John says that's nothing. "You should see the three-tone shag in the attic."
Naturally, that's where Soth is immediately drawn. The space is stiflingly hot and also a time machine of sorts--the posters on the wall, the boxes of LPs, the racks of clothing untouched since 1975. "This is it," says Soth, putting down the case holding his camera.
John and I go back downstairs to cool off while Soth sets up the shot. John does not seem to notice the distant banging and scuffling noises. After about a half-hour, we go back upstairs. Soth, who is drenched with sweat now, says to John, "Hope you don't mind my rearranging." Posters have been repositioned behind a chair, a lamp brought forward, other objects moved. The space is more composed now, a poetic version of what was there before.
But John is gracious, saying it looks cleaner than it has been in a long time. "You oughta come over more often," he says.
"No, this is a treasure trove worthy of documentation." And with that, Soth goes about the business of documenting it.