Quote

I've never been comfortable photographing people I know, myself included. I guess I prefer the mystery of strangers.

Alec Soth

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alec Soth
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: January 1
Photographer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Prefer
Stranger
Guess
Mystery
Comfortable
Never
Photographing
People
Included
Strangers

More quotes by Alec Soth

Image
People can talk about the death of social life or whatever it's not necessarily how I see it. It's more musical in the sense, where it's a feeling about the place I live, slash, who I am in the place.
Alec Soth
Image
I'm like the annoying guy in the street.
Alec Soth
Image
I admire photographers that don't need a destination. In some ways, street photography is like that. There's a quality of wanderlust for sure in my work, but I need a destination.
Alec Soth
Image
Photography, for me, is a lot like web surfing in real life.
Alec Soth
Image
For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter.
Alec Soth
Image
It's a weird combination that makes a great picture. It's a complete mystery to me.
Alec Soth
Image
Whether you are Minor White or Robert Frank, almost every photograph starts with an act of pure description - a window. But every now and then you catch a glimpse of the photographer's reflection. The mirror is just another function of the window.
Alec Soth
Image
I'm a project-based photographer I think in narrative terms, the way a writer thinks of a book, or a filmmaker a film.
Alec Soth
Image
Photography's future is infinite and bright. It's growing exponentially, so that's great, but for me as a practitioner, that exponential growth makes it even more problematic. And so for me, it's got me more engaged with storytelling.
Alec Soth
Image
I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.
Alec Soth
Image
You can photograph anything. You can be inside, outside, doesn't matter, you're controlling the light. It gives you great flexibility. That was a primary motivation.
Alec Soth
Image
The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it.
Alec Soth
Image
If you want to be a creative person, then you’re gonna have to be creative in how you put your career together. There isn’t a path. Part of the creativity is making your path.
Alec Soth
Image
The people that I photographed allowed me to photograph them because they didn't want to be alone, and the truth is I didn't want to be alone making the pictures.
Alec Soth
Image
I didn't want to pretend to be a conceptual artist that charges $10,000 for an experience. It's just not what I am. I'm a photographer and I make prints. And people buy a print, and I understand that. But I'm uncomfortable with buying an experience.
Alec Soth
Image
Watching my daughter sort of live in this world where a photograph is not something to keep a memory. It's something to just speak with. It's language.
Alec Soth
Image
For me, the act of photography is all about discovery and finding new things.
Alec Soth
Image
Nobody really wants to be alone. People need people.
Alec Soth
Image
Photography is a very lonely medium. There’s a kind of beautiful loneliness in voyeurism. And that’s why I’m a photographer.
Alec Soth
Image
[Photography is] very related to poetry. It's suggestive and fragmentary and unsatisfying in a lot of ways. It's as much about what you leave out as what you put in.
Alec Soth