ALEC SOTH

Sleeping by the Mississippi, Minnesota-based photographer Alec Soth's visualization of river landscapes and communities in the series, offers an alternate view of the life surrounding America's iconic, yet often neglected “third coast.” As a student, Soth attended a lecture by photographer Joel Sternfeld, who traversed America in a van as he photographed the land. It was at that moment that the artist decided to capture the United States in this same wandering manner.

In the series, Soth's embrace of the American vernacular is set toward small-town curiosities, where he investigates the funkier side of the American river culture through its eccentrics, gritty landscapes, fraying towns, and dreamers. The title “Sleeping by” suggests a sense of slumbering subjectivity as well as a metaphor for wandering and dreaming. Thus, the series is ultimately a meandering from Winona, Minnesota, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which Soth traveled over the course of five years. Equipped with a large-format 8 x 10 view camera, he approached his subjects and often posed the question, “What is your dream?”

Lush, painterly, and exquisitely composed, Soth's pictures portray the habits and habitats of people along the Mississippi, each of which evoke a consistent mood of loneliness, longing, and reverie. Themes of religion, death, sleep, and sex also recur in the images. In Fort Jefferson Memorial Cross, Wicklife, Kentucky, a group of orange jumpsuit-clad convicts break from road work while above them looms a massive, industrial-looking white cross that dominates the vista until we gradually see the river flowing in the distance.

Beds also play an important part in the rhythm and sequencing of Soth's journey. In Venice, Louisiana, the white bed frame is lost amidst the flourishing riverside foliage. Venice is apparently the furthest south you can travel the river by car. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, and the vanishing coast of Louisiana, Soth's image serves as a documentary record, preserving evidence of a past time though grounded in reverie.

Although you see little of the Mississippi River in the photographs, nor are any of his subjects sleeping, the series is rooted in the Southern traditions of folklore and storytelling, as Soth narrates his quest to shape an image of his own river, one littered with bits of Americana, of a particular time and place.

EXHIBITIONS

Southern Exposure: Portraits of a Changing Landscape

MAY 16, 2015 - AUGUST 30, 2015