image of a large pile of old photographs; VHS tapes on L and in TC of image; daffodils and other purple faux flowers in URC; red textured cloth with debris on it in background

Copyright %C2%A9 Alec Soth

Abandoned House, Coahoma, Mississippi, 2021

Not on Viewexpand_more

In A Pound of Pictures—Soth’s pandemic series—the artist centers his unwavering love of photography and reckons with its pull upon his life. The act of picture making lies heavy along each of the compositions selected; seeing the world clearly presupposes a kind of distance and a removal of the self from the frame. These photographs, however, insist upon the physical and emotional presence of the artist: in perhaps the finest of the series, he stands behind his view camera in a hotel room, photographing his and his daughter’s reflection in a lens-like mirror. In another, Soth reprises Walker Evans’ iconic view of the steel mills and row houses of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from a hilltop graveyard, parking his own battered minivan at the center of the frame. In an abandoned house, he arranges videotapes and snapshots with artificial flowers for an elegiac still-life; in another, he shows a woman arranging her own bouquet from discarded flowers at a crossroads. Through each composition, Soth imparts a sense of homecoming, as well as a kind of fateful wonder at the vast emotional terrain of life.

Details
Title
Abandoned House, Coahoma, Mississippi
Artist Life
born 1969
Role
Photographer
Accession Number
2022.13.2
Curator Approved

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image of a large pile of old photographs; VHS tapes on L and in TC of image; daffodils and other purple faux flowers in URC; red textured cloth with debris on it in background

Copyright © Alec Soth

Because of © restrictions, we can only show you a small image of this artwork.