Along the dilapidated bank of a river, dead grass and tiny bare trees assume various broken positions along a cold, overcast landscape.
A part of this scene is the edge of an aqueous body, where the reflective waters of a river meet the gray earth. What appears to be a pillow floats in the transparent shore of a forgotten place, motionless and suspended.
From an old, empty house in New Orleans, La., a formal 1960s portrait of a woman in a yellow dress and bouffant hairdo rests on a likewise empty wall, the subject of the painting staring out the door as if she were an inhabitant of the place.
In the next room, a single chair is visible and a hanging light bulb is lit, an added light source in an already brightly lit house with no people within.
In the tradition of Mark Twain’s artistic rendering of the Mississippi River, Minneapolis-based fine art photographer Alec Soth has, in his latest project, “Sleeping by the Mississippi,” given life to the landscapes and characters existing along the fabled riverbed.
Starting in 1999, the artist went from place to place, armed with a large format 8×10 view camera photographing the things he found of interest.
Inspired by Mark Twain’s 19th century tale, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the resulting images appear almost like a dream floating in and out of one’s consciousness, existing in memory only as a delicate souvenir of time and place.
The slow, graceful flow of the Mississippi river becomes a part of our consciousness through the poetry of the artist: “Over and over again I fall asleep with my eyes open, knowing I’m falling asleep, unable to prevent it. When I fall asleep this way, my eyes are cut off from my ordinary mind as though they were shut, but they become directly connected to a new, extraordinary mind which grows increasingly competent to deal with their impressions.”
According to Soth, this quote from Charles Lindbergh, written about the twenty-second hour of his transatlantic flight in The Spirit of St. Louis, relates to the dreamlike nature of his work.
“Like…Huckleberry Finn’s raft, Soth sees his pictures as vehicles for dreaming” says Karen Irvine, who has published an essay on Soth’s latest project.
In his color photographs of various subjects including interior spaces, landscapes and portraits, Soth has woven a tale, distinct and wonderful in its conceptual implications. “It’s less about the river itself than life along the river and its path and what it means symbolically,” Soth said. “It’s more about the spirit of wandering.”
Soth’s “Sleeping by the Mississippi” has received many honors and distinctions.
For his latest project, the 34-year old artist recently won the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography, mounted a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, received an invitation to this year’s Whitney Biennial, widely regarded as the preeminent collection of 20th century American Art, and currently has a New York solo show at the Yossi Milo gallery in Chelsea.
The artist’s first monograph is due out this year for “Sleeping by the Mississippi.”
Soth will also be the department of art and design at ETSU’s latest visiting artist, sponsored by the Student Photography Association.
John Wood, editor of The Journal of Contemporary Photography, is convinced that Alec Soth possesses a “wonderful and terrifying eye” which makes his documentary photography so enthralling.
According to Wood, Soth is “unafraid of humor and irony, which are impossible to leave out of any authentic American vision … and he uses color as an integral part of his composition … his colors are as important as the objects, the people and the things he captures.”
The artist will be conducting a slide lecture and print viewing on Friday, March 26 at 6:30 p.m. in the Ball Hall Auditorium, Room 127.

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