Alec Soth At the Jeu de Paume, Paris

Boris Mikhailov, Berlin, Germany, 2004

Alec Soth is a different breed to many of Magnum’s photographers. His three books, Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara and Dog Days Bogotá all bear -testament to his fragmentary, elliptical approach to photography. Following in the American photo-graphic tradition of Walker Evans, Robert Frank and Stephen Shore, his open-ended images capture his impressions of the places that he has explored and the people that he has encountered. Selected photographs from these three bodies of work in addition to his portraits, including some from Soth’s Magnum Fashion Magazine, have been brought together for the first time in a show at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris.
Born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Soth, 39, had his first book, about the Mississippi river, -published in 2004. It takes in alternative, simple l-ifestyles, such as a man living on a snow-bedecked houseboat, alongside the local landscapes, such as a mattress floating among reeds or a child’s toy boat on the tip of a riverbank. The importance of -religion in Middle America is seen through a statute of Christ on an electricity post, a portrait of a reverend holding a microphone outside a car, or a prayer room in a house. Undynamic lives are glimpsed through images of a woman resting in her sleeping bag or another of a woman sitting alone in a bar -decorated with Valentine hearts, or photos of interiors filled with old furniture and chipped paint on the walls.
For Niagara, Soth travelled to the towns near the Niagara Falls, juxtaposing the breathtaking views of the falls with romantic disappointments. His images show cheap motels, love letters from the broken-hearted, rings in a pawnshop, naked young couples, a red heart-shaped basin, a lonesome bride, and a wedding-dress hanging on a line. The spirit here appears to be largely that of disillusionment, an unglamorous tourism industry thriving on people’s unfulfilled dreams.
Dog Days Bogotá is composed of Soth’s most personal work. It is the culmination of photographs taken over a two-month period in Colombia while he and his wife were in the process of adopting their daughter. The book is a gift to his daughter and offers an outsider’s portrait of this city. Pictures of ramshackle architecture, stray dogs and young mothers are intermingled with representations of fear and violence – such as a murdered body, a gun on a police officer’s desk, and black grapes lying on a newspaper article about terror. Yet, through the image of pilgrims going to Cerro de Monserrate, the white church on the mountain summit, a glimmer of hope emerges. Eyemazing spoke to Alec Soth about his show at the Jeu de Paume.
Anna K. Sansom: How does the title of your show, L’Espace entre nous, meaning “The Space Between Us”, express your relationship to photography?
Alec Soth: It relates to something that I always say about portraiture: when I photograph somebody, it’s as much about a space between the two of us, and that relationship, as a portrait of that person. The same can be said about a place. When I photographed the Mississippi river, it was about how I encountered and moved across that space. You don’t get any definitive information about the place in my photographs. It’s more evocative of my experiences and encounters with the subject.
AKS: Your photographs reveal a particular relationship between you and your subjects. How do these pictures come about?
AS: All the pictures are made out of some kind of non-verbal attraction. I always say that it’s like seeing a person across a crowded bar. Why does that person catch your eye? They just do. I try to trust those instincts and respond to people whom I feel that chemistry with. Sometimes you get to know them well; sometimes it’s a very brief encounter. One thing that is true of all my work is that I’m not a photographer who spends two months photographing one family. I float over things. It’s like a bird swooping down and catching a fish; it’s not about living underwater with the fishes. I’m not proud of that. Some of my colleagues at Magnum say they are dedicated to living with their subjects, and I’m not that kind of person.
AKS: Are you very much in your interior space when you photograph?
AS: I was a very shy kid and afraid to speak to people. And part of the mechanics of the large-format -camera, putting a dark cloth over your head and working on technical aspects, is that it takes a long time. I’m not interested in penetrating somebody else’s inner life. I’m very much in my interior space. And as the subject is waiting for me, they move into an interior space themselves. There’s less posing and thinking. So and you have two people, each in their own space.AKS: What does the Mississippi represent for you and what sparked your interest in photographing the towns along it?AS: The Mississippi starts in Minnesota and it is pretty much in the middle of the United States; some people have called it the third coast. Like the East and the West coast, it functions as a corridor for the economy. It was once pivotal for the economy and many cities along its banks. But as river commerce faded, those towns faded. Part of the allure for me was that it is the forgotten third coast.
AKS: What childhood memories do you have of the Mississippi?
AS: I didn’t live on the banks of the Mississippi but, like so many boys, I played in the woods and had -fantasies about building rafts and all those Huckleberry Finn fantasies. The Mississippi is a natural link to that kind of dreaming.
AKS: Several of these images show empty beds and run-down interiors, hinting at nostalgia and disenchantment. What were your impressions of these -places?
AS: It’s always interesting to me how people react to my work. One of the things about showing it in Europe is that it tends to receive other reactions than in the US. Often Europeans interpret it as being a critique of America and funnily enough a lot of Americans think that too. But for me, this is actually an optimistic book. It shows that life is hard but that you can still pursue a dream, even if that sounds really corny and simplistic. There’s “Peter”, that fellow who lived in that houseboat for 20 years, who had chosen his own path and creative lifestyle, and the other fellow who decorated all his room with lights. They’re outside the mainstream, living small yet creative, beautiful lives.
AKS: Why are there so many religious images in this body of work, from statues, icons, reverends and Christian celebrations?
AS: In a way I didn’t choose it, it chose me. You can’t drive through Middle America and not notice religion. Religion is everywhere. I started the trip in the north in Minnesota, where it was cold, and then as I was driving south, the trees began to blossom and spring emerged. With that came Ash Wednesday and Easter with the themes of reawakening and spiritual renewal. There was the spiritual feeling of the clouds and the sky, and the river meeting the ocean. But I didn’t have an agenda.
AKS: Why did you decide to produce a book about Niagara Falls, contrasting the splendour of the falls with the romantic disappointments of young couples and love letters? AS: I decided to work on Niagara Falls before ever being there. Most Europeans don’t know Niagara Falls, but you say Niagara Falls to most Americans and they think about honeymoon, or your parents’ generation going on their honeymoon. Just like my book on the Mississippi is about wandering, Niagara Falls is about dealing with themes of love and romance. I think this is quite a dark book, incidentally, and it does get quite negative at times. I have quite complex way of reading it that most people don’t have.
AKS: Why do you think negatively about it?
AS: Most people who go to a waterfall for their honeymoon think it symbolises passion because of the surging force of water and have a vision of the magnificence of this waterfall. But married life is not a surging force of passion all the time. And surrounding this is the ordinary life we’re living. The book is kind of about my distrust of overwhelming passion.
I had a lot of negative experiences there. I was turned down for pictures a lot and some of the people I -photographed were living very destructive lifestyles. I was nearly arrested after someone called the police because I was photographing these two kids who were fully clothed but underage. The police thought I might be a paedophile. And as I was always crossing the Canadian border, I got into problems and found it hard to explain myself. The making of the Mississippi book was innocent for me and Niagara Falls was so much harder.
AKS: What did you seek to capture in Dog Days Bogotá, which is like a tribute to your daughter’s place of birth? Again, you captured a lot of religious imagery.
AS: I was exploring the place, trying to learn something about it. More than with my other projects, I was very aware that I didn’t know the culture and was an outsider. My experience was entirely shaped by the process of adoption. The photographs are a reaction to my being there at that space in time, and that is a key point to the religious imagery. Just like the pilgrims who climb that mountain there on Sundays to give praise and gratitude, I’m very grateful for the most incredible gift that I was given in Bogotá.
AKS: Your images juxtapose a sense of conflict through the images of the police and the gun lying on the desk of a military office against the portraits of young mothers and the views of the city from the hills. What did you want to evoke?AS: There’s no doubt that Colombia is a place that is dealing with a difficult situation. We were there not long after 9/11, and being in this country that has dealt with terrorism for a long time made me feel that I was looking into the future, that terrorism in the US was a whole new concept. A nightclub was bombed near where we were staying; every street had armed guards. What I was interested in showing is that it was such a beautiful place, rich in possibility, and how people were dealing with that.
AKS: What inspired you to photograph so many stray dogs?
AS: The dogs are very much a metaphor for me. There were a lot of street children and I didn’t want to -photograph them because it just felt wrong. The first thing my daughter said when we went to an opening [in the US for Dog Days Bogotá] was, “Do these doggies have a mummy?” She gets it, and it has to do with how some children, for one reason or another, are in that predicament. The dogs were just a different way to deal with that subject matter.
AKS: Would you describe much of your work as being metaphorical?
AS: Absolutely. I would like it to be more like poetry than an essay.
AKS: You’re including a room of portraits. What does it feature?
AS: It’s an ongoing, never-ending series including older and newer work, editorial and personal encounters. There’ll also be some portraits taken in Minnesota from my Magnum Fashion Magazine, Paris-Minnesota.
AKS: How do you feel about exhibiting all these different bodies of work together?
AS: I’ve seen these pictures so many times that in some ways they’re like old friends! It’s about putting the bodies of work up together and seeing how they respond to each other and the connection between them. That’s what I’m excited about. I’m asking myself: Does this look like the work of one photographer? Is this consistent? Right now I’m in the process of taking apart the way I do things. I feel this show marks the end of a phase, and that it’s going to sum up this period of development for me. Then I can move on to whatever’s next.AKS: What are you working on now?
AS: In my new work, I’ve just felt the need to try a radically very different way of working. It’s not about people or the social landscape at all. So in terms of “the space between us”, that space is now very far!
AKS: What feelings would you like people to take away from the show?
AS: Well, one thing that’s really different in the show from the books is that you get to see real prints with a lot of detail because they were taken with an 8 x 10 camera. What I hope people take away is the simple reality of a bed or a person’s skin or a street dog or whatever it is. Simple, everyday reality can be extraordinarily beautiful. It’s not me or the photograph doing that, it’s just the world as it is. I’m not afraid of the word beauty, the beauty of the world.
Text by Anna K. Sansom in http://www.eyemazing.com/