Known for his haunting portrayals of lonely Americans in Sleeping by the Mississippi and Broken Manual, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens on communal country life . To aid his search, Soth took on the increasingly outdated role of a reporter for a community newspaper. From 2012 to 2014, Soth traveled from state to state while working on his self-published newspaper, The LBM Dispatch, as well as assignments for the New York Times and others. From upstate New York to Silicon Valley, Soth attended hundreds of rallies, dances, festivals, and community gatherings in search of human interaction in an age of virtual social media.
With Songbook, Soth has stripped these images of their news context to highlight the longing for connection at their root. Fragmentary, funny and sad, Songbook is a lyrical representation of the tension between American individualism and the desire to be united.
The signed edition includes an additional image plate signed by the artist and affixed to the inside back cover.
First edition, fourth printing
embossed hard cover
28.5 x 27.3cm
144 pages,
75 tritone plates
