Alec Soth

The American Alec Soth has been counted among the world’s leading photographers for some years now. His 2004 series Sleeping by the Mississipi catapulted him into stardom: following in Robert Frank’s footsteps, the artist documented American life on a road trip along the Mississippi – and did so in a very subjective, poetic, melancholic way. Soth’s photographic oeuvre – he is a member of renowned photo agency Magnum – has since been on display in all major exhibition houses and photography institutions. His solo exhibition at KUNST HAUS WIEN constitutes an Austrian premiere: Soth’s famous series Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagara (2006), Broken Manual (2010) and Songbook (2014) will be shown for the first time in Vienna, alongside his most recent work I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (2019). With the latter, a condensed portrait series, the artist has once again caused a sensation after a one-year break.

Alec Soth’s photographic work seduces us with its poetic visual language. With a masterly hand, Soth captures images of suburban and rural areas in the USA, of people and settings. His large-scale series can be read as case studies of American society. Soth’s photographs provide an insight into the lives of ordinary, and sometimes not so ordinary, people; his work covers middle class life outside the big metropolises as well as people on the margins of society.

Biography

Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he also lives. His photographs have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including: Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2018); London Science Museum, London (2015); The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki (2016 –2017); Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan (2016); Museo de Bogotá (2013); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2010); Fotomuseum Winterthur (2008); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2008). Works by Alec Soth can be found in the following collections, among others: Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Frankfurt am Main; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.