Sleeping By the Mississippi [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

~ Patricia Hampl (Author), Alec Soth (Photographer), Anne Tucker (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi captures America's iconic yet oft-neglected "third coast." Soth's richly descriptive, large-format color photographs present an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes, and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, Sleeping by the Mississippi elicits a consistent mood of loneliness, longing, and reverie. "In the book's 46 ruthlessly edited pictures," writes Anne Wilkes Tucker, "Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex." Like Robert Frank's classic The Americans, Sleeping by the Mississippi merges a documentary style with a poetic sensibility. The Mississippi is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created out of a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust. The coherence of the project places Soth's book exactly within the tradition of Walker Evans' American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans. --Anne Wilkes Tucker Essays by Anne Wilkes Tucker and Patricia Hampl. Clothbound, 11.25 x 10.75 in. / 120 pgs / 46 color.

About the Author

Photographer Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He is the recipient of major fellowships from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations, and was awarded the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His photographs are represented in major public collections including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Soth's widely acclaimed first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published by Steidl in 2004, followed by Niagara and Dog Days Bogota in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Soth is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York and Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis. He is an associate photographer with Magnum Photos.

"Patricia Hampl is Regents Professor in the Department of English, University of Minnesota. A MacArthur Fellow, she is the author of I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory and many other books of prose, poetry, and non-fiction." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Steidl; illustrated edition edition (June 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3865210074
• ISBN-13: 978-3865210074
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 10.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #958,465 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular!!!!, September 12, 2004

By	K. Rosier (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Alec Soth builds on the tradition established by William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld. But Soth dramatically moves beyond these masters by presenting a more eccentric cast of characters, a stronger thematic melody and a more personal insight.

Soth's photographic journey down the Mississippi evokes a boyish sense of adventure. Dreams, flight, religion, race, sex and unusual personalities appear repeatedly in the work, often in subtle allusion. The young photographer captures a rainbow of quirky characters defining a life filled with rich personal meaning outside the mainstream of cultural or artistic norms, locations, institutions and without significant financial expense.

The book's forty-six pictures reflect a richness of detail possible with Soth's 8 x 10 inch camera. Each page offers a title on the left and the work on the right. Photographers Notes at the end of the book hint at the depth within Soth's work. Essays by Patricia Hampl and Anne Wilkes Tucker complete this wonderful Steidl publication.

The Whitney Bienniel 2004 prominently featured Soth's work, which has been acclaimed by the critics and will be embraced by the broader public as this young photographer becomes better known. A spectacular body of work, Sleeping by the Mississippi places Soth squarely at the front of young American photographers continuing to move art forward.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Watch this star rise!, August 20, 2004

By	David Ziegenhagen (Cloverdale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Alec Soth captures the world in a way every bit as solid and exciting as Walker Evans and Diane Arbus. The book is solid in content and publishing quality and would fit comfortably in almost anyone's library. This young photographer is going places. Watch his star rise over the next few years!

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not bad, but let's dial back the hype, April 24, 2006

By	jack kerr (lowell) - See all my reviews

this work is solid, beautiful, and thoughtful, but if you are interested in this kind of work you should first get Eggleston's Guide, Stephen Shore's "Uncommon Places," and especially Joel Sternfeld's "American Prospects" which this book seems to pick up from. but in all honesty, those books are not only better, groundbreaking (this is not groundbreaking work), and significant in an art/photo history context, they did so 30 years ago at a time when color photography was still seen as nothing to be taken seriously.

so, buy this book, but only after the others. this is 'friends', go buy seinfeld first.