Josh, Joelton, Tennessee 2004 by Alec Soth

Jörg has very kindly agreed to the occasional jb blog contribution in conjunction with our upcoming A New American Portrait exhibition, and I’ve promised to contribute some of my own thoughts on portraiture and the exhibition too. I’m working on it and will be posting here later this week (and throughout the show.) For some reason it’s easier for me to go on and on about, say, parking than it is for me to write about what I like and why when it comes to photography.

In the meanwhile, Alec Soth is articulate and on video talking about portraits, and the segments below are really worth a viewing. I’m especially fond of the third, The Ground Glass, where Alec describes a portrait as “A picture of the space between us.” Good stuff.

Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004 by Alec Soth

These videos were made by Mike Dust for The Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program. I’ve added some relevant links below and included two of the images referenced in the post here too. Josh, Joelton, Tennessee 2004 is a favorite of mine and was on my short list to be included in the exhibition. Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004 looks entirely different to me after watching Alec shoot the photo in the video.

In October of 2004, photographer Alec Soth went on assignment for LIFE magazine to capture weekend soldiers at an Airsoft military simulation in Joelton, Tennessee.

In anticipation of his upcoming exhibition, filmmaker Mike Dust traveled alongside Soth for this three-day excursion, interviewing and shooting alongside him as he worked to capture images for, both the magazine shoot as well as for his personal work.

A number of these photographs (Odessa, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004 and Josh, Joelton, Tennessee, 2004) became part of the exhibition Alec Soth: Portraits at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts the following spring. The video piece created during that shoot was installed in the gallery as an accompaniment to the exhibition.

The video is broken into three segments entitled On Assignment, Portraiture, and The Ground Glass.

Alec Soth: Portraits – On Assignment (2:33, segment 1 of 3), 2005, Video, 8 minutes, produced and directed by Mike Dust, © 2005 National Projects

Alec Soth: Portraits – Portraiture (2:25, segment 2 of 3), 2005, Video, 8 minutes, produced and directed by Mike Dust, © 2005 National Projects

Alec Soth: Portraits – The Ground Glass (3:06, segment 3 of 3), 2005, Video, 8 minutes, produced and directed by Mike Dust, © 2005 National Projects

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 6:10 pm by Jen Bekman Gallery and is filed under at jen bekman, exhibitions, photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.