Alec Soth: Broken Manual
Alec Soth investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization.
Alec Soth investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization.
Alec Soth investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization.
From 2012 to 2014 Soth traveled the United States looking for signs of social life in our era of virtual social networks. From upstate New York to Silicon Valley, he attended hundreds of meetings, dances, festivals and family gatherings.
In photographs made on a series of road trips across the U.S., Soth records people and locations with subtle connections. The series features images that reference photography itself, investigating the physicality of the medium and its limited ability to preserve what is fleeting.
Taking its name from a line in Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Gray Room,” this body of work investigates the possibilities and limitations of what photographs can convey about the inner lives of their subjects. Intimate and quiet, the images reveal something otherwise unknowable about both the sitter and the photographer.