A new book by Alec Soth, returning to his peripatetic wandering in the US, he presents images from travels with a fellow writer, in an attempt to channel the small town newspaper photographer/reporter combo that, intentionally or not, gave voice to life in everyday America.
It a well produced publication, with wonderful black and white printing, and a great cover concept. The photographs are classically presented, each to their own page, never across the gutter, and mostly facing a blank page. The images are often intriguing, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes surreal or plain weird. Therein lies the problem, the photographer can't seem to make up his mind he wants to make a sincere work about the economically impoverished life of today's America, or a version of Sultan and Mandel's amazing 1977 book 'Evidence', and ends up confusingly somewhere between the two.
Some of the photographs here speak about lives spent trying to escape the shadow of poverty through religion or sports or bargain shopping or hardscrabble work: the oil worker, the beauty pageant entrants, the poor family walking home by the roadside, the diners eating isolated at their own tables. Then we get the 'isn't this weird?' images randomly thrown in there, that just seem to entertain us with a disembodied hand throwing a rock to another disembodied hand, some hair brushed backwards in a baseball cap, a man's body half hidden at the back of a server room, etc. The message gets mixed, the powerful photographs get diluted, and the tone of empathy and compassion is lost. Mr. Soth undoubtedly has the talent and work ethic to speak deeply about the state of his country, but here he settles too often to make editorial images, that on occasion are moving, but often fall back to being simply entertaining. This could have been as powerful as Chris Killip's 'In Flagrante', as elegiac as Paul Graham's 'A Shimmer of Possibility', as melancholic as Vanessa Winship's 'She Dances on Jackson', or build up like Mark Steinmetz's Southern Trilogy, but sadly, despite all the hard work, sells itself short.
I'd still recommend it for any serious photography enthusiast, and it will doubtless be many photo students favorite plus a sales success, but a photographer of this talent and ability needs to be pushed to aim for the highest of artistic achievement. Come on Mr Soth, don't settle for NYTimes style editorial imagery - make something profound and moving, of the highest quality which you are clearly capable.
