Artist lecture: Alec Soth 1/27/10

My first impression of Soth was that I found him to be humorous. I could see this reflected in some of the work he showed us. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that he uses an 8x10 large format view camera, which was clearly evident in his work. I thought he brought up some great points that I hadn't considered before, such as (and I'm paraphrasing here):

*"What does it mean to be a photographer and photograph democratically when there are so many photos in existence, e.g. Flickr and Facebook?"

*"What does a photojournalist contribute when they go to Hati? When they'd just be using up more water and taking up space, getting in the way?"

*"Problem with photographic storytelling is that each photo is a fragment. Works only if the viewer connects the dots to come up with the story themselves."

As the lecture went on and he described how drastically many of his projects would change while working on them, I began to feel as though he doesn't have a good grip on his concepts. I agree that artists should follow their instinct but I felt that some of his projects, such as Niagara, lost its common thread. The work seemed too scrambled and all over the place to be considered one body of work.

I also didn't appreciate his stories about trying to track down a woman he came come across in New Zealand and Georgia and his unannounced visit to Eggleston's home. Those stories painted him in a bad light in my eyes and made him come across as rude and creepy.