Guernsey Photography Festival 2021

USA

Alec
Soth

Looking for Love

See all photographers

“If you dropped off a roll of black-andwhite film at a drugstore in the upper Midwest in 1996, there is a good chance it was printed by me. I spent that year (I was 26) and several others working at a large commercial photography lab. Most of my days were spent in the dark, printing pictures of seemingly happy Midwestern families. I was, of course, miserable.

After a day in the dark, I would head to the bar. More darkness, yes, but I was comforted by that boozy, underwater world and the solitude I found among strangers. In time, I started making pictures. Back at work, I would spend more and more of my day printing my own photographs. (I would tape the finished prints around my legs and sneak them out of the darkroom under my jeans in a slow robot-walk to my car.)

As these pictures accumulated, I started straying from the bar into the city itself. I even began skulking around in the sunshine. Still, the heart of this work was back in the darkroom. Alone for hours on end in the darkness, I would daydream about the adventures to come. One day, I imagined, a stranger would fall in love with me.” - Alec Soth

About Alec

Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has published over twenty-five books including Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), NIAGARA (2006), Broken Manual (2010), Songbook (2015) and I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating (2019). Soth has had over fifty solo exhibitions including survey shows organized by Jeu de Paume in Paris (2008), the Walker Art Center in Minnesota (2010) and Media Space in London (2015). Soth has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2013). In 2008, Soth created Little Brown Mushroom, a multi-media enterprise focused on visual storytelling. Soth is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Hammons Gallery in Minneapolis, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, Loock Galerie in Berlin, and is a member of Magnum Photos.

Learn more

To learn more about Alec Soth and his work visit: www.alecsoth.com and follow him on Instagram: @littlebrownmushroom