Having mis-remembered 33 Theaters as a funeral home typology I’m looking into it anyway because Alec Soth is a great photographer and I looked at his other series’ last year. It’s relevant to go back to him as has new work since then and I didn’t cover this series last year – there’s a lovely moment about how the funeral home ended up in his series of cinemas that all students will relate to.
Born in 1969 in Minnesota, Soth still lives and works there. Sleeping by the Mississipi was Soth’s first published monograph and received wide critical acclaim. It was republished in 2017. He has since published over 25 books of which some of the most well-known are NIAGARA (2006) Broken Manual (2010) and Songbook (2015). He has recently published a new work I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating (2019) a photobook of only 35 images from a series of 75 full format close up, indoor, more intimate portraits than he has done before.
A quote from him in the Guardian interview about his new project and angle, Soth remarked that “Photography is not essentially a sensitive medium, but I’ve come to realise that sensitivity matters. It really does.” This rang true with me too because in the places that I have been shooting it’s been all about the sensitivity. I understand what he means because in the past Soth’s work has been about the large format image, mostly shot outside, and the fact that, as he had grown in confidence he was able to “with charm” be a little pushy to manipulate a situation to gain his photograph. “Now, I want to undercut that somehow by being a bit more sensitive, less pushy” he says, and as he points out he’s bringing an unwieldy contraption into a small space and sitters have to remain still for a long time, “It’s a camera built for Ansel Adams to photograph the American deserts and prairies and I’m using it in confined interior spaces. It’s demanding but nothing else comes close when it comes to capturing light and texture. It ’s almost sensual the way it caresses surfaces.”
For his series 33 Theaters and a Funeral Home in 2006, Soth had been charged by Magnum produce a body of work inspiring by a film director and a particular film. Soth chose Wim Wenders and his films Paris, Texas and Kings of the Road. Soth had always wanted to go to Paris, Texas and Kings of the Road was his favourite film growing up.
Kings of the Road is a road movie about two men, one of whom is a cinema repairman. “It really had that that American sensibility and a love of that American tradition too, it’s set in East Germany, and it’s partly about the death of cinema.” He also wanted to choose The Last Picture Show by Peter Bogdanovich which is about the end of cinema and based in Texas. In this way Soth justified combining all the elements for his project.
Soth chose to take a friend with him on the trip to replicate the two man road trip and had 10 days to shoot the project so had to work quickly to find his subjects. “We didn’t have that much time, it was a week and a half, and Texas is huge. That’s how the converted funeral home comes up we did all this research, but it turns out it was the wrong place, but I loved the picture so kept it, and it also refers to the death of cinema.” Even the greats can have moments when their research lets them down.
When he found them, most of the cinemas had been converted into something else.
But not all of them.
For me the loneliest image is the one from Waco where the building itself looks like a forlorn face, abandoned and left alone on the street to contemplate the death of cinema. It’s even on Elm Street. Nightmare.
Sources:
https://alecsoth.com/photography/
INTERVIEW: “Prescience and Poetry – James Miller with Alec Soth” (2009)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/photographer-alec-soth-on-a-life-of-approaching-strangers
https://pro.magnumphotos.com/CS.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_4&IID=2K1HRGT6R7F&PN=1
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