Alec Soth: Niagara

Following on from his critically acclaimed debut monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth has turned his gaze to another iconic body of water, Niagara Falls. As with his photographs of the Mississippi, Soth’s images of Niagara are less about natural wonder and more about human desire. “I went to Niagara for the same reason that newlyweds and suicides do,” Soth explains, “the incessant thunder of the falls just calls for great passion.” Working for two years on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls with a large format 8×10 camera, the photographs are rigorously composed and richly detailed. Soth depicts naked brides and lovers, motel car parks and pawn shop rings. Throughout the book, Soth has interspersed a number of love letters from the subjects he has photographed. We read stories of teenage crushes, workplace affairs, grief and suicide. Oscar Wilde wrote of the Falls, “The sight of the magnificent cascade must be one of the earliest, if not the most vivid, disappointments of American married life.” In Soth’s Niagara, we see both passion and disappointment. Her images are a remarkable representation of modern love and its consequences.