Alec Soth

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.

Alec Soth investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization.

Of this body of work, Soth writes, “Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, ‘The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks.’ But I don’t think the world would have been a better place if these photographers had headed off to a war zone. The question is whether you can be a political photographer while you photograph rocks.