alec soth

When I first decided to do environmental portraits for my negotiated study I looked at the work of Alec Soth especially his book ‘Sleeping On The Mississippi’ in which Soth documents his road trip along the Mississippi river, he captures the everyday lives of the people in the towns and makes these little run down towns looks beautiful. The book has a mixture of landscapes, documentary and environmental portraits within it. The environmental images make the reader wonder who the people are and what their story is that he photographs. The Landscapes are of these little snowy, desolate towns and areas but Soth makes them full of character like the places speak for themselves. The documented images look at the living conditions and the decayed area surrounding it. Soths images are known for being religious or having a salvation theme in some of his images.

 In one Image (Image 1) Soth has taken an image of an area surrounded by trees and someone or a few people have dumped their old chairs and because of the way they are placed it looks like a typical American living room, the lighting looks natural and that it has been taken maybe before dusk or on a cloudy day because of the grey tones in the sky, there are no colours bright that jump out at you, which helps give its abandoned decayed atmosphere that Soth used to his advantage to create this image.

The next image (Image 2) ‘Preacher Man’ which is taken of a blonde haired  ‘Joshua’, who has a tattoo of a tear drop below his eye and on his collar stitched is ‘Preacher man’ with just looking at the picture alone, the viewer would be able to sense there is a lot of emotional behind ‘Joshua’s’ stern yet sad look and after reading the writing next to the image you find out he is serving a 42 year sentence for murder so in a way the writhing around his neck is like a fallen halo. The blue tones used mostly in the image create a cold atmosphere which helps gives the image more depth behind it and the fact that Soth has ‘Joshua’ in focus and the rest blurred makes it look like he is really alone.

In Image 3 ‘Charles’ which image also is featured on the front cover of ‘Sleeping on the Mississippi’ is of a man in a flight suite holding two model aeroplanes. ‘Charles’ looks like someone that has always wanted to fly a plane but because he can’t he builds models instead, puts his flying suite on and fulfils his dreams another way. In this image Soth has done a full length shot to get in the surroundings to give the image more character, Charles appears to be standing in the place where his planes take off from so the area is important. The building next to him is his workshop where he builds his many models. The colours in the image are quite neutral and don’t overpower even other so nothing stands out dramatically except his planes which are a bright red but they are important to the image.