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Transcription: [00:02:19]
{SPEAKER name="Alec Soth"}
But I've had this, you know - because I've been working on this

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I've had just a real desire to do, you know, to explore the opposite.

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and um, and it's also something that's just on my mind - as the wall text, kind of, might allude to, I think

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uhh, a little bit, but it doesn't--

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Uh, when I was in— I went to Sarah Lawrence College, uh, which is you know, a real, uh,

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you know, uh, how do I say it? - you know, sort of artsy-fartsy, you know,

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East Coast - but we're on the East Coast, so I won't say that - school. Uh,

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but, and we had a copy of this book by Garry Winogrand called 'Women are Beautiful' and,

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and I couldn't believe that this book hadn't been burned, you know, it was, 'cause it's really, uh, not politically correct.

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And over the years I've thought about that book - and I hadn't seen it - and, uh,

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and I thought - well maybe, you know, he was on to something,

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uh, maybe he's just being honest.

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And I recently got my hands on this book, and it's, it is that, it is honest, but it also

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not the greatest book in the world, at all.

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uh, but I thought can I put together an exhibition just of portraits of women, that

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acceptable as a theme, it seems stupid, somehow, but I gave it a shot

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and and this is what I came up with, and it really represents

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um, all these different lives of photography that I get to lead

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um, probably the earliest picture in here is this one,

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uh, which is from 2000, so I, the first body of work that I did that got exposure

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was something called "Sleeping by the Mississippi"

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and this is a series of photographs made along the Mississippi River over the course of several years

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a number of trips. Incidentally I'm on a road trip right now as we speak

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uh, and we just started in Minneapolis, drove to Philadelphia where I gave a lecture, I'm here, I'm going down to Savannah, and I'm working my way around

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and this is my absolute favorite time of year to travel.

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'Cause I just love the kind of cold in the North and blossoming in the South

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and I, with sleeping by the Mississippi, I always tried to travel at that time of year

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um, and a side effect of that was that - all this sort of you know, Easter/Lenten kind of material was coming up in the South

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so, this picture is in, uh, Ash Wednesday, you know, the day after Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

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The funny little story behind the picture is that, um,

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so, you know it's the next day, and everyone is tired and hung over, and I asked if could take her picture

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and she says, "yeah, will you buy me a beer?" and I, well, that doesn't really go with the whole Ash Wednesday thing

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[[laughter]] and, oh she said "oh, cigarette ashes, they're not, it's not real, they're not real ashes"

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so, [[laughter]] um, and another funny story about her is that on this, "crazy bearded guy in the woods" project

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I, I was at a commune in outside of Austin, Texas, and she had just been there, cause I, sometimes I bring along copies of my books to show people

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and they, "we know her, she was just here" it was just crazy, cause her name is Adelyn, she didn't have an address, so I never could send her a picture

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but it's, her last name is like Shockadelicka [[laughter]]

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um,