Alec Soth: Artist Profile

Alec Soth, a photographer of quietude and a chronicler of the American grain, doesn't shout; he whispers. His large-format portraits and landscapes, often focused on the country's overlooked margins, possess a stillness that's less about the absence of noise and more about the presence of something deeply felt. He's not interested in the spectacular, but in the subtle poetry of the everyday, the hushed moments that reveal, almost inadvertently, the human condition. Think of him as a contemporary Walker Evans, but one who trades Evans's stark social commentary for a kind of melancholic tenderness. He photographs the vernacular, not as a detached observer, but as someone attuned to the quiet hum of existence. Soth, who has cited Diane Arbus as an influence, travels the backroads of America, collecting images like a wandering poet gathering verses. His journey along the Mississippi, documented in the self-published Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), brought him to wider attention, with one of its images, "Charles," even gracing the poster for the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

Soth's work has drawn comparisons to Walker Evans and Stephen Shore, and he has shot for publications like The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and Newsweek. But his approach is far from purely editorial. He's spoken of the nervousness he feels when photographing people, suggesting that his own awkwardness becomes part of the exchange, a kind of shared vulnerability. This vulnerability translates into an intimacy in his portraits, a sense of connection between photographer and subject. His process is deliberate, almost methodical. He’s described travelling with notes taped to his steering wheel, lists of image ideas – beards, birdwatchers, after the rain, figures from behind, and so on – a kind of visual haiku in progress. He asks permission, waits for his subjects to become comfortable, often working with an 8x10 camera. He seeks a “narrative arc and true storytelling,” a sense that each image flows into the next.

His work has continued to evolve since Sleeping by the Mississippi. Niagara (2006), for example, explored themes of love and desire, including a series of portraits of newlyweds arranged through a Niagara Falls wedding chapel. Last Days of W, a more politically charged project, reflected a nation exhausted by the Bush presidency. Between 2006 and 2010, Soth, under the pseudonym Lester B. Morrison, worked on Broken Manual, a kind of underground guide for those seeking escape. This project saw him exploring the retreats of monks, survivalists, hermits, and runaways, a journey into the fringes of society. Concurrently, he produced From Here to There: Alec Soth's America, a broader survey of his work. His practice is marked by these distinct projects, each a chapter in an ongoing exploration of the American landscape and its inhabitants.

Sleeping by the Mississippi, with its elegant design and thoughtful sequencing, serves as a prime example. His exhibitions, too, are immersive experiences, large-scale prints inviting contemplation. One remembers the hushed reverence of his gallery installations, the way the images command a space. His 2016 exhibition, Hypnagogia, explored the liminal state between waking and sleeping, a further exploration of interior landscapes. Even a seemingly straightforward assignment, such as a laughter yoga workshop in India for The New York Times Magazine, led to a year-long break from commercial work and a renewed focus on personal projects. A subsequent art residency saw him collaborating with the then 97-year-old choreographer Anna Halprin.

Soth’s work sits squarely within the tradition of American documentary photography, but it transcends the genre. His images are not simply documents; they are imbued with poetry and a sense of human connection. They resonate with the work of photographers like Robert Frank, whose subjective approach to documenting America also sought to unearth something deeper about the nation's character. As Philip Brookman has noted, Soth’s photographs are “both intimate and epic, personal and universal.” They capture the quiet grandeur of the everyday, the beauty in the mundane.

Soth has encouraged a new generation of photographers to slow down, to embrace the deliberate nature of large-format photography, to seek out the quiet corners of the world, and to connect with their subjects on a more profound level. While it’s difficult to pinpoint specific artists directly influenced by him, one can certainly detect a broader trend towards a more contemplative and personal approach to documentary work – a trend in which Soth has played a significant role. His founding of the publishing house Little Brown Mushroom (LBM) further underscores his commitment to fostering a particular kind of photographic storytelling. Through LBM, he publishes his own work and that of other like-minded photographers, creating “narrative photography books that function in a similar way to children’s books.” His collaborations with writers like Brad Zellar also highlight his interest in the interplay between image and text.

Soth's legacy is still being written, but his contribution to photography is already substantial. He has reminded us of the power of the still image to capture the complexities of human experience, to tell stories that resonate across cultures and time. He has shown us that the extraordinary can be found in the ordinary, if we only take the time to look. "I think photography is about paying attention to the world," Soth has said. "It’s about seeing what’s there and trying to understand it." This, perhaps, is the key to his work: a deep and abiding curiosity about the world and a commitment to seeing it, not as it should be, but as it is. His photographs, with their quiet beauty and profound empathy, will continue to challenge and inspire for years to come.

Bernd and Hilla Becher : Artist Profile

Bernd and Hilla Becher, a collaborative force in the world of photography, embarked on a project that redefined the very notion of photographic representation. Their work, a meticulous and dispassionate cataloguing of industrial structures, transformed the way we perceive both the landscape and the camera's capacity to document it. They were not, perhaps, artists in the conventional sense, but rather chroniclers, driven by an almost scientific impulse to classify and preserve a disappearing world. Their black and white images, devoid of dramatic lighting or sentimental framing, presented blast furnaces, water towers, grain elevators, and other functional structures with an austere beauty that resonated far beyond the realms of documentary photography.  

The Bechers' project began in the late 1950s, a time when photography was moving beyond the pictorialism that had dominated its early years. They were influenced, perhaps, by the New Objectivity movement in German art of the 1920s, which championed a realistic and unidealised representation of the world. One might also detect echoes of August Sander's ambitious project to document the German people through portraiture, though the Bechers' focus was on the industrial landscape rather than the human face. They sought, as they often stated, to create an objective record, a typology of industrial forms. “We don’t have any message,” Bernd Becher once said. “We are only interested in the object.” This seemingly simple statement belies the profound impact of their work.  

What is important about the Bechers' work lies precisely in this self-imposed limitation. By stripping away subjective interpretation and focusing on the pure form of their subjects, they revealed the inherent beauty and complexity of these often-overlooked structures. They presented these industrial behemoths not as symbols of progress or pollution, but as objects worthy of attention in their own right. Their photographs, often presented in grids of similar structures, emphasised the variations within a type, revealing the subtle design choices and functional adaptations that shaped each individual building. This typological approach, reminiscent of scientific classification, allowed viewers to see the underlying logic and evolution of industrial architecture. “We wanted to make the object speak,” Hilla Becher explained. “We didn’t want to add anything.”  

The Bechers' work evolved over the course of their career, though their fundamental approach remained consistent. They refined their technique, achieving a remarkable clarity and depth of field in their images. They also expanded their geographical scope, documenting industrial structures not just in Germany, but also in other parts of Europe and North America. Their early work focused primarily on the heavy industry of the Ruhr Valley, the heartland of German industrial production. Later, they turned their attention to other types of structures, such as water towers and grain elevators, broadening their survey of the industrial landscape. While their subject matter expanded, their photographic style remained remarkably consistent, a testament to their unwavering commitment to their chosen method.  

The Bechers published a number of influential books throughout their career, each one a meticulously crafted collection of their photographs. Anonymous Sculpture (1970) was an early and important work, showcasing their typological approach to industrial structures. Other significant publications include Blast Furnaces (1971), Water Towers (1988), and Grain Elevators (1997). These books, with their stark black and white images and minimal text, became essential references for architects, artists, and anyone interested in the built environment. Their exhibitions, too, were significant events, often featuring large grids of photographs that transformed the gallery space into a kind of industrial museum. One recalls the austere beauty of their installations, the sheer number of images creating a powerful cumulative effect.  

The Bechers' work occupies a unique place in the history of photography and art. It challenged the traditional notions of artistic expression, blurring the lines between documentary photography and fine art. Their influence can be seen in the work of many contemporary photographers, particularly those who explore the relationship between landscape, architecture, and industrialisation. Their work also resonated with artists working in other media, influencing conceptual art and minimalism. One might argue that their detached, objective approach paved the way for a new kind of photographic practice, one that prioritised concept and documentation over subjective expression. As the art critic and curator Douglas Fogle noted, "The Bechers’ photographs are not simply documents of industrial structures; they are also meditations on the nature of representation itself."  

The Bechers' influence is vast and continues to grow. They have inspired generations of photographers to look at the world with fresh eyes, to see the beauty in the mundane and the significance in the seemingly insignificant. Their students at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, including photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer, have gone on to become major figures in contemporary photography, each developing their own distinct style while sharing a common interest in the objective representation of the world. While not explicitly acknowledging the Bechers as an influence, one can see a certain kinship in the work of these artists, a shared commitment to clarity, precision, and the exploration of the contemporary landscape.  

The Bechers' legacy lies in their profound impact on the way we perceive the world around us. They taught us to see the beauty and complexity in the industrial landscape, to appreciate the ingenuity and functionality of the structures that shape our lives. Their work is a testament to the power of photography to document, to classify, and to reveal the hidden order of things. They transformed the way we think about photography, moving it beyond the realm of personal expression and into the realm of objective observation. "They are not artists in the traditional sense," wrote the critic and curator Jeff Wall, "but their work is art, of a very high order." This assessment captures the essence of the Bechers' contribution, their ability to transcend the conventional categories of art and photography and create a body of work that is both aesthetically compelling and historically significant. Their photographs, with their stark beauty and unwavering focus, stand as a powerful reminder of the industrial age and its enduring impact on the world we inhabit.

Lewis Baltz: Artist Profile

Lewis Baltz’s photographs are not about beauty in the conventional sense. They are about the stark realities of the contemporary landscape, the overlooked corners, the banal architectures, the spaces in between. They are about the quiet unease of the post-industrial world, the subtle violence of urban sprawl, the creeping anonymity of late capitalism. Baltz’s work, one could argue, is a kind of forensic examination of the built environment, a meticulous cataloguing of the often-unseen structures that shape our lives. As he himself stated, “I am a describer. I describe things as accurately as I can.” It’s this commitment to description, this almost clinical detachment, that makes his work so powerful. He wasn’t interested in the picturesque, the sublime views that had defined landscape photography for so long. As he explained, “I was living in Monterey, a place where the classic photographers—the Westons, Wynn Bullock, and Ansel Adams—came for a privileged view of nature. But my daily life very rarely took me to Point Lobos or Yosemite; it took me to shopping centres and gas stations and all the other unhealthy growth that flourished beside the highway. It was a landscape that no one else had much interest in looking at.”

Born in Newport Beach, California, Baltz’s own journey through this overlooked landscape began with studies at the San Francisco Art Institute before receiving his MFA from Claremont Graduate University. His subsequent career, marked by his involvement in the seminal 1975 “New Topographics” exhibition, solidified his position as a key figure in redefining landscape photography. Alongside Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, and Bernd and Hilla Becher, Baltz presented a new vision, one that focused on the “man-altered landscape,” the often-unassuming spaces of tract housing, office parking lots, and industrial parks. As William Jenkins, the curator of the "New Topographics" exhibition, noted, the photographers shared a “stylistic anonymity,” which he linked to the detached point of view employed by Ed Ruscha.

Baltz’s influences are complex and not always immediately apparent. He admired the work of Walker Evans, particularly his documentary photographs of the American South during the Great Depression, but Baltz’s approach was fundamentally different. Evans’s images, while often stark and unadorned, possess a certain humanism, a sense of empathy for his subjects. Baltz’s photographs, on the other hand, are more detached, more focused on the structures themselves, the way they impose themselves on the landscape. He also acknowledged the influence of the New Topographics exhibition itself, a landmark show that provided a crucial context for understanding his work and that of his contemporaries. As he said, “I never saw myself as a photographer. I never liked photography very well. I never felt any allegiance to its so-called history … I made photographs because photography was the simplest, most direct way of recording something.”

His early work, particularly his series The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California (1974), established his distinctive style. These photographs, taken in the newly developed industrial parks of Southern California, depict rows of identical warehouses, anonymous office buildings, and vast expanses of empty parking lots. They are images of a world without people, or rather, a world where human presence is reduced to a mere trace, a fleeting shadow. As he explained about this series, “I was interested in the idea of a kind of tabula rasa, a place where everything was possible, but in fact, nothing much was happening.” This sense of emptiness, this feeling of potential unfulfilled, is a recurring theme in his work. As he recalled, growing up in Southern California, “You could watch the changes taking place and it was astonishing. A new world was being born … this new homogenised American environment that was marching across the land. And it seemed no one wanted to confront this; it was invisible.”

Baltz’s photographs are not always easy to look at. They can be monotonous, even depressing. But they are also strangely compelling. They force us to confront the often-unseen realities of the world we inhabit, the structures that shape our lives, the forces that drive our society. He had a knack for finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, for revealing the hidden beauty, or perhaps the hidden ugliness, of the everyday. His minimalism, as seen in his influential photobooks like The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California, San Quentin Point, and Candlestick Point, possessed a stark, geometric beauty, making visible this “new homogenised America” in a way that echoed – and criticised – the soullessness of urban planning and the corporate rationale behind it.

Lewis Baltz in Jean Nouvel's Amat hotel. Image: Slavica Perkovic

The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, published in 1975, quickly became a seminal work in the history of photography. It established Baltz as a leading figure in the New Topographics movement and helped to redefine the way we think about landscape photography. The book itself, with its minimalist design and its stark, unadorned images, mirrored the aesthetic of the photographs themselves.

Later in his career, particularly in the late 1980s after moving to Europe, Baltz’s work underwent a significant shift. He moved away from the modestly scaled black-and-white photographs that had defined his early work and began to produce large-scale colour prints. He was interested, he said, in representing “the generic European city.” This change in format and medium allowed him to capture the “massive hermetic spaces” of hi-tech and government research facilities in France and Japan with a new level of detail and intensity. He also became fascinated with digital technology and its uses, particularly in surveillance and control, as seen in his monumental 1992 installation Ronde de Nuit at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Baltz’s work fits into a broader context of 20th-century art that explored the themes of alienation, industrialisation, and the changing nature of the landscape. His photographs share a certain kinship with the work of artists like Edward Hopper, whose paintings depict the isolation and loneliness of modern life. They also resonate with the work of photographers like Bernd and Hilla Becher, who documented the industrial architecture of Germany with a similarly detached and objective eye.

Baltz’s influence on subsequent generations of photographers is undeniable. His work has paved the way for a more conceptual and critical approach to photography, one that questions the traditional notions of beauty and landscape. Photographers who explore the built environment, who examine the impact of human activity on the land, owe a debt to Baltz’s pioneering vision.

Lewis Baltz’s legacy is complex and multifaceted. He is remembered as a photographer who challenged our notions of landscape, who revealed the hidden structures of our world, and who explored the quiet unease of the contemporary condition. His photographs continue to fascinate, to disturb, and to inspire. They are a testament to the power of photography to illuminate the often-unseen forces that shape our lives and to remind us of the beauty, or perhaps the strangeness, of the everyday. As he himself said, “I certainly wanted my work to look like anyone could do it. I didn’t want to have a style. I wanted it to look as mute and as distant as to appear to be as objective as possible, but of course it’s not objective.” Therein lies its enduring power.

Rut Blees Luxemburg: Artist Profile

Rut Blees Luxemburg (born 1967) delves into the urban underbelly, the forgotten corners, the liminal zones where the city breathes, sighs, and sometimes, whimpers. Hers is a photography of unease, a visual interrogation of the spaces we often choose to ignore, the architectures of alienation that define so much of modern life. Luxemburg’s work, it can be argued, is less about the seen and more about the felt. It’s about the residue of human presence, the unspoken narratives etched into concrete and steel.

"I'm interested in the city as a psychological space," Luxemburg has said, a statement that resonates throughout her oeuvre. It's not just bricks and mortar, but the anxieties, the dreams, the sheer weight of human experience that she seeks to capture. This, it can be argued, is the crux of her work. It's not simply documentary, though it certainly engages with the fabric of the city. It's not purely aesthetic, though her images possess a stark, often unsettling beauty. It's something more profound, a kind of urban psychoanalysis rendered in the language of light and shadow.

Luxemburg’s work exists in a dialogue with the history of photography, though she rarely makes explicit references. One can detect echoes of Atget's melancholic flânerie, his documentation of a disappearing Paris. There's also a hint of the New Topographics' detached gaze, their focus on the banal and the overlooked. But Luxemburg transcends mere documentation. She infuses her landscapes with a palpable sense of atmosphere, a feeling of something lurking just beneath the surface. "The city is a palimpsest," she has explained, "a layered text where the past is always present, even if it's invisible." And it's this invisible past, this spectral presence, that she makes visible.

Her influences, it is suspected, are not solely photographic. One can sense a kinship with the urban chroniclers of literature, the writers who have explored the darker recesses of city life. Think of Baudelaire's flâneur, adrift in the labyrinthine streets of Paris, or the alienated protagonists of Kafka's novels. Luxemburg’s images, like these literary counterparts, are filled with a sense of displacement, a feeling of being lost in the crowd, even when utterly alone.

What, then, is the significance of Luxemburg's work? It lies, it is believed, in its unflinching portrayal of the contemporary urban condition. She doesn't shy away from the ugliness, the decay, the sheer indifference of the modern city. Instead, she confronts it head-on, forcing us to look at the spaces we'd rather ignore. Her photographs are often unsettling, even disturbing, but they are also profoundly moving. They remind us of our shared humanity, our vulnerability in the face of the urban behemoth.

"I'm not trying to romanticise the city," she has insisted. "I'm trying to understand it." And this understanding, it is argued, is what makes her work so compelling. It's not about judgment, but about observation, about bearing witness to the complexities of urban life.

Luxemburg's work has evolved over time, both stylistically and thematically. Her early photographs, often in stark black and white, possessed a raw, almost brutal quality. They focused on the fringes of the city, the industrial estates, the abandoned buildings, the spaces where the city's discards gather. Later, she began to incorporate colour, not as a decorative element, but as another layer of meaning. The colours are often muted, desaturated, adding to the overall sense of unease.

"Colour is another form of light," she has explained. "It's not just about what you see, but how you see it." And Luxemburg sees the city in a way that few others do. She sees the poetry in the mundane, the beauty in the broken.

Her use of long exposures is also crucial. It blurs the lines between reality and dream, creating images that are both familiar and strange. The city becomes a stage for a kind of urban ballet, where time itself seems to slow down, allowing us to see the subtle movements, the fleeting interactions that make up the fabric of urban life.

Luxemburg's books are not merely collections of images; they are carefully constructed narratives, each telling a different story about the city. Amnesia (1997) felt like a dispatch from the urban unconscious, a collection of images that haunted the viewer long after the book was closed. Liebeslied (2001) was a more intimate exploration of urban desire, the longing for connection in a city of strangers. Phantom Estates (2004), perhaps her most politically charged work, documented the rise of luxury housing developments in London, exposing the social inequalities that underpin so much of urban development. "These buildings," she said of the Phantom Estates, "are not just houses. They are symbols of a new kind of city, a city where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

Her exhibitions, too, are carefully curated experiences. They are not simply displays of individual photographs, but immersive environments that invite the viewer to enter into Luxemburg's urban world.

Luxemburg's work occupies a unique space in the history of photography. She is not a documentarian in the traditional sense, nor is she simply an artist using photography as a medium. She is something more, a visual poet of the urban landscape. Her work resonates with the tradition of urban exploration, from the flâneurs of 19th-century Paris to the Situationists of the 20th century. But Luxemburg's vision is distinctly her own. She sees the city with a critical eye, but also with a sense of empathy.

"I'm not trying to judge the city," she has said. "I'm trying to understand it, to feel its pulse, to hear its whispers." And it's these whispers, these subtle clues to the city's inner life, that she captures so brilliantly in her photographs.

It's difficult to quantify the influence of an artist, but it is suspected that Luxemburg's work will continue to resonate with photographers and artists for generations to come. Her unflinching portrayal of the urban landscape, her ability to find beauty in the mundane, her exploration of the psychological dimensions of city life – these are all qualities that will continue to inspire and challenge.

"The city is always changing," she has said. "And I'm always trying to keep up." And it's this restless curiosity, this desire to explore the ever-evolving urban landscape, that defines Rut Blees Luxemburg's enduring legacy. Her photographs are not just images; they are invitations to look more closely, to see more deeply, to feel the pulse of the city in all its complexity and contradiction. They are, in short, a vital contribution to our understanding of the urban world.