Photographer Alec Soth (with the hat) and Darius Himes, from Radius Books, at the Magenta Flash Forward Festival. Image copyright Ryan Enn Hughes.
18 Oct 2010
Alec Soth and the Democratic Jungle
Why take photographs when so many already exist in the world? Alec Soth presents his eccentric take on photography and narrative at the Flash Forward Festival
Diane Smyth
Magnum Photographer Alec Soth (it rhymes with "both") gave a great talk at the Flash Forward Festival in Toronto on 08 October, centring on his struggle in "The Democratic Jungle".
Soth was originally inspired by William Eggleston's book, The Democratic Forest, he said, in which Eggleston shot 'democratically', that is without privileging one subject over another. But Soth then started to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of possible subjects and, in an era in which thousands of images are published online every day, started to question the value of adding more images to the sum total. Lost in the 'democratic jungle' he turned to narrative to help navigate his way through but - being the idiosyncractic Soth - was determined to avoid 'the pale beige tone' of conventional photographic narrative.
Instead he's been experimenting with more subjective approaches, hunting for the most beautiful woman in Georgia for Magnum's group project, Georgian Spring, and creating a series of eccentric multimedia projects for the New York Times' Opinionator blog. More recently he's started looking at children's books for narrative inspiration, encouraging his daughter Carmen to create an illustrated story to go along with her photographs at the Brighton Photo Biennial.
Funny, but also very thought-provoking, it was a talk a bit like Soth's work itself, and anything but beige.
Comments
'Why take photographs when there are so many that already exist in the world?' You could say that about people. 'Why have babies when so many people already exist in the world?'
In fact there is always something new to photograph and that may well even be a new baby. A large population also means a large consumption of images which are needed for human communication. No-one ever seems to ask 'Why write another book when there are already so many in the world?' Yet I would argue that images are as important for human communication as is text.
If we take the subject of photojournalism alone there is much that is happening in the world today that is not being photographed either through military restrictions of one country or another or because there is a lack of interest or resources to carry out this work.
Yes, we see the same type of images over and over again but that merely hides the fact of what we don't see on the web or in print.
It is the postmodern version of a Shakespearean soliloquy - a pondering on the meaning of life and the ultimate futility of it.
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