Do you own a work by Alec Soth, which you would like to sell?
Alec Soth Prices
Artist | Artwork | Price (incl. premium) |
---|---|---|
Alec Soth | Venice, Louisiana | €2.480 |
Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, studied in Yonkers at the Sarah Lawrence College, and was seen as shy and introverted as a child and in his youth. His interest in photography was spurred by the work of Diane Arbus, which excited and inspired him. Sloth himself became famous for his series Sleeping by the Mississippi, for which he travelled along the great river and made numerous landscape shots and portraits. He published the resulting photographs himself, and the picture Charles, showing a man in a flying suit holding two model planes, was chosen for the 2004 Whitney Biennial poster. That same year, Alec Soth was named as a candidate for the prestigious Magnum Photos agency, of which he became a full member in 2008. After the Mississippi, the Niagara Falls, America deserts, untouched areas and city outskirts became Soth’s motifs and the stage for his stories.
Despite his documentary approach, Alec Soth works primarily in a conceptual way. This also applies to his choice of photographic work tools, for, as up-to-date and relevant as his pictures are, his way of working is old-fashioned: For his photographs, he uses an antiquated plate camera on a tripod. That is not only time-consuming, but also expensive, with each press of the shutter costing the photographer 50 dollars. The artist freely admits to still feeling a certain nervousness and uncertainty in his work, despite his success. For the sitters, who are almost without exception quite ordinary people, this visible weakness of the photographer is a comfort and an encouragement, and contributes to the fact that Alec Soth tells thoroughly profound human stories, whose punchlines and twists are often not fully revealed even at the second glance.
Alec Soth finds the outer structure of his work in the geographical conditions of his homeland, in the contours of which he embeds his actual subject, that of the person. Its essence and longings make up the core of his art; Soth’s pictures tell a story behind the façade, focus on the beauty of human vulnerability and thus gain unique and touching insights: In his own words, vulnerability is the most beautiful thing in the world. The inherent technical slowness of the medium is an advantage for the photographer because he has enough time to empathise with his motif and to build a relationship. In 2010, he founded his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom, under which he publishes narrative photo books which function similarly to children’s books, from either himself or like-minded photo artists. Soth has also collaborated with the writer Brad Zellar on several publications.
Alec Soth lives with his family in Minneapolis.
© Kunsthaus Lempertz
Do you own a work by Alec Soth, which you would like to sell?
Artist | Artwork | Price (incl. premium) |
---|---|---|
Alec Soth | Venice, Louisiana | €2.480 |
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