Alec Soth is a well known photographer. According to his Magnum profile:

Alec Soth’s work is rooted in the American photographic tradition that Walker Evans famously termed “documentary Style.” Concerned with the mythologies and oddities that proliferate America’s disconnected communities, Soth has an instinct for the relationship between narrative and metaphor. His clarity of voice has drawn many comparisons to literature, but he believes photography to be more fragmented; “It’s more like poetry than writing a novel.”

Aside from his many critically acclaimed personal projects, selected clients include The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W Magazine, Vogue, GQ, Wall Street Journal Magazine.

Much of Soth’s work is tied to an interest in the photobook and in 2008, he started his own publishing company, Little Brown Mushroom. His major series have all become critically acclaimed monographs; the first Sleeping by the Mississippi (Note I have a copy of this one), was published by Steidl in 2004, NIAGARA (Steidl, 2006), Broken Manual (Steidl, 2010), Songbook (MACK, 2015), I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (MACK, 2019).

Soth has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, McKnight, Bush, and Jerome Foundations and was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His photographs are represented in major public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the National Gallery of Art. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney Biennial and career surveys by Jeu de Paume (2008), Walker Art Center (2010) and Media Space (2015).

Soth, who is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and the Weinstein Hammons Gallery in Minneapolis.

He became a nominee of Magnum Photos in 2004 and a full member in 2008.

As mentioned above Soth (rhymes with Both) loves photobooks and has a massive collection. About a year ago he started a YouTube Channel where he discusses photobooks in general and uses photobooks from his collection as examples. I find the videos to be absolutely fascinating, and I like Soth himself – he seems to be a very genuine person.

His most recent photobook is “A Pound of Pictures“.