Visual Art Currently Hanging
posted by on August 5 at 11:00 AM
Alec Soth’s Rainbow Inn (2005)
The truth is, this is really only currently “hanging” on Alec Soth’s web site, but I really wanted to share it with you because I just found out that Soth, one of my favorite contemporary photographers, is receiving the Photographic Center Northwest’s PhotoVision Award this year. That means he’ll give a public talk Sunday, September 28, at 2 pm at Seattle Art Museum.
One of the reasons I love this image is fairly personal: It’s from Soth’s NIAGARA series, and my parents, like so many, honeymooned at Niagara Falls in the late ’60s. Like the tight triangular composition of this image, my parents had a very structured life in mind ahead of them: marriage, home, children. And, of course, as the incongruent elements of the photograph depict (the rainbow sign, the gray sky; the intimacy a motel promises, the distance of the camera from the building), things didn’t work out. Like not even close. For the last 26 years, my parents haven’t spoken.
If you think that’s cheesy, let’s just say this is also simply a terrific photograph, taken by someone who still believes in the power of an image to (relatively) unselfconsciously depict the world.
UPDATE: I meant to add a link to Soth’s great, now-defunct blog, but according to a note on its home page, it has been attacked by hackers and is down for now.
I love that picture.
the distance of the subject is what makes it.
Not to mention the irony of the glorious honeymoons spent in what could well be a view onto any pre-1989 Eastern European cityscape: desolation incarnate.
Very effective image.
I like the photograph, even more I like your explication on (of?) it.
totally a winner.
I don't get it, it's an empty parking lot with a motel in the background. Not even an interesting motel, just a plain boring soviet block style hotel.
It's gorge. I wish I'd taken it.
its an ugly picture, of an ugly street, of an ugly building.... and this joker is getting an award?
ooh ooh!, and the car off by itself symbolizes the last refuge of those in such a desolate locale who can't even afford to stay at the big grey building...
yeah... sure.... "art" people... sheesh
It's not so provocative and interesting that I would hang it on my wall, but it sure does speak of heartbreak and desolation. Empty parking lots in the gruesome winter of the middle of nowhere. That's bleak, baby.
i can take pictures that banal.
i can take pictures that banal.
I'll bet you fuckin' can't. It hard. It's a lot harder to take a picture that desolate than it is to take another pretty pitcher of a flower.
Mmmm - so then where exactly would you rank shitting out the explanatory turds of Jen's on this scale of yours?
soth's images are melancholic with a twist of irony and humor- beautifully and utterly human. another great image from the niagara series: The Seneca, 2004. the subtleties, composition... alec rocks.
come meet alec! http://gala.pcnw.org/
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