Alec Soth, born in 1969, is an American photographer based in the state of Minnesota, with over 25 published photobooks. Soth seems to focus on both landscape photography and portraiture, often combining them into personalised environmental portraits.

This image is a full-length body shot of a man Soth was curious about on his road trip. The man in the image, Charles, stands in quite a regular position, wearing his lightly paint-splattered overalls, almost dressed like a pilot, which creates connotations to the model planes in his hands. The colour palette in the photograph is very high-key, the biggest contrasts being from the darkest shadows underneath the materials on Charles’ roof and under the gutter on the wall of his house, to the ice-white snowfall on his roof. The exposure in the image is quite high, evident in the lack of detail in the bright grey sky and the snow, which complements the airy colours throughout the rest of the piece. Charles makes a direct mode of address to the viewer with both his body language and his eyeline, looking straight into the camera lens, although the reflection in his glasses makes it rather difficult to see. He bears a neutral expression on his face, which forces a viewer’s opinion to be purely based off of the rest of the environment and his other features. Soth intends to present Charles in a documentary-style image, not reinforcing any sort of authority, gender roles or authority, displaying Charles in as raw a form as he can.

Soth came across Charles during a road trip, when noticing his home and its peculiar glass-domed roof. Soth knocked on his door and requested to speak to the occupants, to learn about these strangers, and took the photograph a few hours later. He learned that Charles was a very aspirational person who’d built the dome to look at the stars, and considered himself a ‘dreamer’.