We watched a short clip, where he explained his work and medium. I have stated some of my thoughts on him, in this short response:

Most of Soth’s work includes working with strangers. Being that he is a shy character he finds this challenging, but that drives him more. He quoted: My own awkwardness comforts people.” He also added: “I still get nervous today… I did a picture for a The New Yorker recently and I was drenched in sweat by the end and it was the middle of winter.”

Much like Trent Parke, Soth is also into street photo photography, although that’s not his main practice. The American photographer looks at large scale projects including: portraits, landscapes, still-life’s, etc. It’s complicated to explain it, as he says. But he tried to ‘weave all the pictures together to show this larger world’. He creates some many portraits of complete strangers and other amazing works.

He imagines what he wants to capture before he even photograph’s it. He has a purpose and an aim. Most of the time, the Magnum photographer writes down a list of things he wants to look at, for instance ‘bird watchers’

Here’s an example of Alec’s old business card:

Soth said that in he see’s ‘photography as different from conventional storytelling in that in some ways, the photographer is the protagonist’. He believes that ‘the photographer is the protagonist’. This means that they have as much input as the people being shot and that the photographer can ‘experience the movement’.

Since he’s a documentary photographer, he believes that “you need multiple images to tell a story.” He adds “being frozen in time, means you can’t really tell stories.” His contemporary photography is amazing. It captures great moments such as vulnerability, both in him and the people he photograph’s. Soth is very interested in vulnerability as he thinks there’s something beautiful about it. He added “(I’ve been) amping up the vulnerability, but also my own vulnerabilities, exposing more of myself. Throughout the process in which he takes, edits and uploads pictures vulnerability is definitely a major theme.

He’s essentially an artist that uses photography to tell stories. Although his approach isn’t the typically traditional.

For instance here’s some of his work entitled Sleeping by the Mississippi

Most people would imagine that during the ‘Mississippi’ series all Alec did was take pictures of random places. Contrarily to popular belief, Soth actually wanted to capture a ‘journey’ and magical moments as he travelled through the state.