Wanderlust is as American as revival meetings. So, too, is the outlaw instinct. Behind every Butch Cassidy hightailing it over the mountains there's a posse of dreamers cheering his getaway.
These are Alec Soth's people -- the ragtag individualists, outsiders, scofflaws and loners who populate the national imagination and linger in the mildewed shadows of small-town dives and backwater shacks. In the past decade the Twin Cities photographer has rocketed to international acclaim with his memorably stark portraits of these thoroughly American types. His latest major show is a 20-year survey opening Sunday at Walker Art Center.
Subtitled "Alec Soth's America," the show samples his most famous series, "Sleeping by the Mississippi" and "Niagara," dips into his Minnesota work from the 1990s, and includes revelatory new images and publications. The loneliness of life on the road and Soth's fascination with men on the fringe has infused raw edginess into the new work. Even Minnesotans who know Soth's work well will find surprises.
The pictures Soth made along the Mississippi River in the late 1990s are the touchstone of his career, huge color portraits of revivalists, small-town prostitutes, empty beds, shabby rooms and lonely prisoners. Appearing three years after 9/11 shattered America's confidence in its exceptionalism and security, the "Mississippi" series resonated as a portrait of a free-spirited but desolate heartland.
His "Niagara" pictures of 2006 were bleaker, a world of mismatched lovers seeking happiness in tacky motels at the edge of a scenic wonder.
"Everything about the Mississippi project was so easy," Soth recalled recently. "The South was all hospitality. It was a magic trip where everything worked. 'Niagara' was the opposite. People in that part of the country are suspicious. Niagara is not a happy place. The American side is economically devastated and the Canadian side is schlocky and touristic. I did it after 'Mississippi' because it functions in the same way; it's an iconic body of water associated with love and romance. I love the work, but it's dark. I didn't have a love affair with Niagara."
Rarely shown silver prints from the early 1990s demonstrate Soth's debt to such masters of black-and-white photography as Robert Frank, Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Doisneau and others who specialized in candid street shots. His eye for incongruities turned up "Cop and Clown," a charming portrait of a uniformed policeman and a top-hatted clown sitting at adjacent tables in a St. Paul skyway cafe.
The Walker show has shots from "Fashion Magazine," a sly 2007 sendup of the fashion business, and his recent portraits of goth women and lonely guys in Missouri. Portraits of Kmart shoppers, an ice skater and a terrier belonging to Twin Cities art collector Dar Reedy hint at Soth's playful side.
