Book Of The Week I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating Photographs by Alec Soth Reviewed by Blake Andrews Taking its name from a line in Wallace Stevens’ short poem “The Gray Room,” Alec Soth’s latest book is a lyrical exploration of intimacy. While these large-format color photographs are made all over the world, they aren’t about any particular place or population. Whether made in Odessa or his hometown of Minneapolis, Soth’s new book is fundamentally about intimate encounters in private rooms.

I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating. By Alec Soth.

I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating Photographs by Alec Soth

Mack, London, United Kingdom, 2019.
84 pp., color illustrations, 11¾x13¾".

Since bursting onto the scene fifteen years ago with Sleeping By The Mississippi, Alec Soth has established himself as not only one of the world's most prominent photographers, but also one of the more sensitive souls in photoland.

He has always treated the medium as something of a therapist's couch, beginning with his blog's introverted musing in the late 2000s, and continuing from one photo project to the next. Niagara, Dog Days Bogota, Broken Manual, Looking For Love, and Songbook are as much therapeutic tomes as documentary monographs.

Yuko. Berlin.

As his profile has grown, Soth's ruminations have increasingly spilled into public life. What deep internal paradox will he explore next? It's become a bit of a parlor game in critic's circles. But to date he's managed to stay one step ahead and keep us all guessing.

These days fans are just as likely to find poetry posted to Soth's Instagram as photography. One can't help wondering if perhaps he'd have rather been a poet after all? After all, this business of making portraits requires so much invasive prying, so much confrontation. To be huddled in private over a keyboard sounds better, no?

There have been hints of doubt along, but his latest book, I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating, comes the closest to an outright declaration. "There is something predatory about [portraiture]," he comments casually to Hanya Yanagihara while chatting in the book's afterword. Have I mentioned that the book contains mainly portraiture?

Nick. Los Angeles.

True enough. But the recent portraits come with a twist. In contrast to Soth's previous projects, they show friends, not strangers. And whereas the bulk of Soth's past portraiture has been captured on the fly, in whatever environment he happened to find people, the new work is largely made in domestic interiors, in the homes of his subjects.

For some photographers, familiarity eases the image-making process. Not Soth. "I don't photograph people I know," he tells Yanagihara. "The more I know you, the less likely I am to photograph you." Nevertheless, he's persisted in doing just that, targeting friends and colleagues throughout Europe and the U.S. "It's photo 101. I'm just spending time with a person, taking their portrait."

Leyla and Sabine. New Orleans.

Soth's social circle now includes a generous slice of artists and intellectuals. Nancy Rexroth is here, as is Vince Alletti, along with several well furnished apartments, drawing rooms, and fusty libraries. We have left the world of Charles in Vasa far behind, moving into more rarified social strata.

Whether it's the strata or familiarity, Soth's discomfort is evident. A decade ago, encountering a stranger on the road, he was a master of possibility. But here he seems unsure of the best approach. Some subjects are shot through doors or passages at narrow depth of field, subsuming them to technical device. (The best of this type, Soth's shot of William Eggleston at his piano, is not included here). Some recline or sit, staring at the camera or a thousand yards off, while others are propped among artifacts imbued with personal meaning. Taken as a set of 35 photos, the general effect is rather stiff and formal. Of this Soth seems well aware. Indeed, maybe it's just another personality tic, open for self-examination? "Photography, for me, has always been about separation and this feeling of social distance that I have," he tells Yanagihara. Thumbing the images, one can visualize Soth at the scene, fiddling with the camera, talking himself up to the challenge at hand. Tell me again why I'm doing this. Is it too late to be a poet?

Nancy. Cincinnati.

Ten years ago he might've pushed these situations until he hit paydirt. No longer. "I just don't feel pushy in that way any more….I have a sense now it doesn't matter as much. Enough is enough with the ego gratification." A year off of shooting, along with, has helped Soth mature beyond the blunt aggression of youth. He's middle-aged, happy, and in a better place now. But where does that leave his photographs? To be sure, there are still flashes of brilliance. Leopold in Warsaw is magnetic, as is Chicran in his Budapest bedroom, and Sonya laying across Dombrovsky's lap. Who are these people? That's the question that drives all the best portraits. As for the others here, we don't know these people either, but the answer seems less imperative.

Sonya and Dombrovsky. Odessa.

I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating seems a transitional book for Soth. He's edging away from past endeavors. But toward what, it's hard to say. Whatever comes next will surely embrace his sensitivity and meditative quality —"I'm on the poetic side of the spectrum". Beyond that, we shall see. Soth himself probably doesn't know. But he may have inserted a clue —a prompt to his future self— in the book's opening and closing photos. The first one shows a bird trapped inside a windowed room. The last image shows an empty birdcage.

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Blake Andrews is a photographer based in Eugene, OR. He writes about photography at blakeandrews.blogspot.com.

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Alec Soth

Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has published over twenty-five books including Sleeping by the Mississippi and Songbook. Soth has had over fifty solo exhibitions including survey shows organized by Jeu de Paume in Paris (2008), the Walker Art Center in Minnesota (2010) and Media Space in London (2015). Soth has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2013). In 2008, Soth created Little Brown Mushroom, a multi-media enterprise focused on visual storytelling. Soth is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and is a member of Magnum Photos.

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Books Alec Soth: 2016 Best Books Alec Soth Selects FOLK, Got to Go, and Around the House as the Best Books of 2016

Alec Soth

Alec Soth (b. 1969) is a photographer born and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 2008, Soth started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. Soth is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, and is a member of Magnum Photos.

from Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars)

Issue two of Alec Soth's Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars) was a challenge for me to digest. I originally wrote about this title in photo-eye's New Arrivals newsletter, and had to spend a fair amount of time contemplating the bizarre scenarios inside the book. When writing the original draft for the newsletter, Melanie McWhorter and I had a spirited discussion on my inability not to pass judgement on the work, as I thought the photographs  (which are fantastic) were dismal, taking me to places I wasn't completely comfortable being. And it was hard for me to leave these thoughts out of it, indicating to me that Soth has compiled another successfully intriguing publication and that I had more to say in the personal format of a blog post.

The new issue starts off with Todd Hido's Suburban Souls, a dark series of dreary exteriors and erotic interiors. Through these photographs, one can imagine sneaking through seedy streets and low-income neighborhoods, seeking cheap sex and unfulfilled fantasies. Hido's voyeuristic approach grabs the viewer in an arresting manner, creating an uneasy tension while also probing a fundamentally inherent male delusion. I have long been a fan of Hido's work and his ability as an editor, and considering the confines of this short magazine format, the photographer is still able to portray an ominous story that is also very direct.

from Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars)

from Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars)

Breaking up the dark ambiance established by Hido are five dioramas by Peter Davidson. The dioramas – created inside cutout novels – are a narrative of each novel title. Titles such as The Girl from Montana and Does God Exist form the overall structure of each individual piece. The odd humor displayed in Davidson's dioramas continues the theme of LBM's eclectic taste, sometimes steeped in the dingy underbelly of sexual fantasy and sometimes celebratory of pop culture's embrace of sexuality.

from Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars)

from Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars)

Diving back into illicit behavior is Chad States' series Give or Take. A series of photographs taken of public male hook-up spots, including parking lots, underpasses and heavily wooded forests, the viewer is drawn into a world many would consider to be sexually deviant. Public sex spots, barely hidden from the view of a family enjoying a picnic in a local park, immediately registers in my mind. As when looking through the previous issue of Lonely Boy Mag, long forgotten childhood memories have come back to life. I remember that the park I was dropped off at everyday as a kid was a local male hook-up spot and one day a friend and I walked in on two men in the bathroom thoroughly enjoying their short lunch break. We bolted through the bathroom doors at first horrified at witnessing a public sex act and then laughing about the new story we could pile onto our childhood tales. What interests me about this work is how commonplace it is to see men seeking sex in public spaces, most everyone has stumbled upon one of these locations, but it still belongs as a fringe element of society. Included with this work is a short narrative of a young teenage boy meeting and ultimately losing his virginity to an older man at a spot similar to those depicted in these photographs.

from Lonely Boy Mag (No. A-2 Boys and their Cars)

Lastly is Alec Soth's The Most Beautiful Woman in Georgia, a series previously published in the Magnum publication Georgian Spring. This work continues LBM's voyeuristic approach, with Soth seemingly stalking attractive women on side streets often from his car. Some photographs are taken through the car window, while in others it appears Soth has tracked them down for a more formal portrait. Including short text and descriptions of the story, this is a light-hearted but intriguing series, portrayed here in a context completely different to that in which it was originally published.

Thoughtfully designed by Jenny Tondera, the new issue continues along the lines of its predecessor by balancing between quirky humor and very real impressions of explicit behavior. And while some of the content may be hard to digest, it is also very much worth the challenge of engagement. -- Antone Dolezal

Purchase a copy of this title here.

from Lonely Boy Mag.

A new satirical series of men’s magazines is the latest installment from the uniquely clever publishing company Little Brown Mushroom. The first issue of Alec Soth’s Lonely Boy Mag., described as “Midwestern Exotica,” takes a few strange and surreal twists and turns for the viewing and reading experience. At first, I liked the idea of this little publication as an object. It's modest in size and the printing quality and design are very well done. But the more time I spent with it, the more I enjoyed the stories inside. I vividly remember as a kid finding a friend's older brother's stash of literary erotic men's magazines and thinking how bizarre the objects and the stories within them were. Alec Soth did a really great job of replicating this initial experience I had when I was 12 or 13 years old…. it’s kind of an odd rehash of an even odder feeling I had as an adolescent.

Inside of Lonely Boy Mag. are four separate anecdotes beginning with Soth’s own bizarre photo-story Starling. I am not absolutely assured as to how one approaches this narrative that begins with his series Single Goth Seeks Same and ends with an eloquent little photograph of a bird Soth befriended. Regardless of my own inept ability to fully grasp what the photographer is doing, it was good exercise in engaging with a narrative that I found strangely interesting.

from Lonely Boy Mag.

from Lonely Boy Mag.

Following Soth's story is a poetic tale by Jindrich Styrsk titled Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream.  The erotic overtones and dark layers of Styrsk’s narrative are a valued addition to this publication. After Styrsk’s text is a series of photographs of ex-girlfriends from the LBM archive. The photographs, many of them Polaroids, are dated and often if not always allude to sex with tidbits of sadistic humor involved. The first section of Soth's own photographs include a reference to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and the magazine appropriately concludes with Lolita's protagonist Humbert Humbert’s Wanted, adding a thoughtful final touch to this curious addition to the LBM collection.

Similar to LBM’s other series of publications based on the Little Golden Books for children, if you buy the first Lonely Boy Mag., you will probably continue to collect the subsequent volumes. I bought the first book Bedknobs and Broomsticks and it has now become a prized possession in my collection – rarely bringing it out unless another book collector is in the room. -- Antone Dolezal



Purchase a copy of this book here.

photo-eye, with Radius Books and Soth Photography, is pleased to announce The Auckland Project, a book by two vastly important American photographers -- Alec Soth & John Gossage. The trade edition of The Auckland Project will be available signed by both Soth & Gossage, and the limited edition of 40 copies will include a signed and numbered color archival pigment print by each artist and is presenting in a unique housing containing both the book and prints.

In the Spring of 2009, John Gossage and Alec Soth traveled together to New Zealand to work on a joint photography project. For both, it was a trip of departures. Gossage has been creating photographic literature in black-and-white for over 40 years, and this trip yielded one of the first bodies of work he had ever produced in color. Soth’s work with the 8×10 view camera has inspired an entire generation of his contemporaries, and leaving it behind was key to approaching the world from a fresh visual perspective.

John Gossage, print that accompanies The Auckland Project limited edition

Alec Soth, print that accompanies The Auckland Project limited edition

Essentially two books in one, The Auckland Project showcases a playful attention to materials and presentation by showcasing the two photographers' work separately but creatively combined through the device of the book and its housing.

Signed copies and limited editions will be available in early December 2010. For more information and purchasing price, click here.