Alec Soth

Alec Soth is a leading contemporary photographer, who documents American social and geographic landscapes in an offbeat and intimate style. Drawing inspiration from Depression-era photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, Soth is best known for his project-based work on what he calls “the big middle”—the American Midwest. 

He first gained recognition with his series ‘Sleeping by the Mississippi’, lush, painterly colour prints of landscapes and portraits shot over five years on car trips along the Mississippi River. Other subjects include Niagara Falls' honeymoon and tourism communities in Niagara, and the country's exhaustion under two terms of George W. Bush with ‘The Last Days of W.’

In the tradition of road photography established by Walker Evans, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Stephen Shore, Soth documents suburban and rural communities throughout the Midwest and Southern United States. Soth is also the founder of Little Brown Mushroom, a small arts institute and publishing house, through which he collaborates with writers and other photographers to publish books and magazines.