The lecture started with an interesting little film about Lee Freelander. Soth expressed that he liked to show this film because it shows Freelander's shooting technique of driving around and shooting. Soth talks a lot about how he likes the idea of driving around and taking pictures of whatever he feels like.
The image above is from his series entitled Sleeping by the Mississippi. He traveled down the river and took pictures. He explained connections between the photographs and how their connections really had nothing to do with the river. The river was rarely shown either. I picked this image to show here because i liked the loneliness of it. It seems like a place you would find in the middle of nowhere, but there is evidence that people live there from the laundry hanging on the line. The laundry gives the scene color and interest.
It seemed to me that most of his series were created in the sense that he could just travel anywhere and create images. His photographs are connected because of simple comments or facts that occur and exist mostly in his own mind, though some of the connections are evident through the imagery, mood and setting of the photos.
I was and am still pretty confused by his work and his purpose, but i did admire the video that he created where he walked to meet Eggleston. I liked the simplicity, and the little humors that came out of the simple film.
Even though i could not find a strong connection to his work I did appreciate some things that he said. I am taking a film class this year so his comments about telling a narrative where important to me.
-"photographs don't exist in time, stories need moving time to exist."
-photographs can show fragments of a story, the viewer has to fill in the blanks (connect the dots).
These ideas really show important reasons why photographs can be difficult to tell a whole story with. The viewer is needed to interpret and fill in the blanks.
