1969-

Alec Soth is an American photographer, notable for "large-scale American projects" featuring the midwestern United States. His photography has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story behind the image. Working in a photographic tradition of road photography established by such figures as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Stephen Shore, Soth captures stunning large-scale color images often using a cumbersome 8x10 field camera, with an eye toward finding overlooked beauty in the banal. His curiosity, penchant for research, and openness to serendipity in seeking out subjects have all become hallmarks of his working process. The wanderlust embodied in Soth’s work is an impulse to uncover his own versions of the narratives that comprise the American experience. His images offer insight into broader sociologies while forming an unexpected portrait of the country.

Soth’s photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions such as the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, the Walker Art Center in the USA.Books on Soth include Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), NIAGARA (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007), The Last Days of W (2008), and Broken Manual (2010). In 2008, Soth started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. 

His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, to name a few. Soth is also a member of Magnum Photos.