Alec Soth - Sleeping by the Mississippi - 2008

Alec Soth Sleeping by the Mississippi
text by Patricia Hampl and Anne Wilkes Tucker.
Steidl, Gottingen, Germany, 2008. English, 120 pp., 46 color illustrations., 11x10¾".


A very unique set of 3 books:
A very personal signed copy of Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi. Third Edition (Out of Print, 2008). 
The City & Las Vegas, both signed by artist Andreas Schmidt

Includes two small photographs:
- one of Soth holding two photobooks (The City & Las Vegas) by Andreas Schmidt he exchanged for his books
- one of Schmidt and his 3 year old son holding up Soth’s books, which was posted on Soth’s blog around the time of the exchange (with the caption “from Andreas Schmidt (why does it look so green and warm in London)?”).


"It's hard to believe that the first edition of Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi appeared only in 2004, so swiftly has the book become a classic of our time. Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Sleeping by the Mississippi captures America’s iconic yet oft-neglected 'third coast.' Soth’s richly descriptive, large-format color photographs describe an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, his book elicits a consistent mood of loneliness, longing and reverie.
“In the book’s 46 ruthlessly edited pictures,” writes Anne Wilkes Tucker, “Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art,music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex... The coherence of the project places Soth’s book exactly within the tradition ofWalker Evans’ American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans.”
Like Frank’s classic book, Sleeping by the Mississippi merges a documentary style with a poetic sensibility. The Mississippi River is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created from a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust. Featuring a new linen-bound cover with a tipped-on image, this is the third print run of a volume which has become one of the most widely collected and highly acclaimed photo books of recent times."