Signed; Alec Soth - Sleeping in Mississipi - 2008

Welcome to this special sale of books or authors listed in the book Photobook by Parr & Badger. All are signed copies. Alec Soth's book is referenced in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, volume II, page 50, and in Martin Parr's Best Books of the Decade, pages 22-23. All previous editions have sold out, but this book is so important that the English publisher MACK reissued it in 2017 (not to be confused).

Rare copy of the 2008 edition, exceptionally signed on the title page by Alec Sot (born in 1969), probably the most beautiful edition with its gray cloth binding and its mounted photograph on the cover. 45 full-page color photographs printed on the recto side only. Text in English by Patricia Hampl and Anne Wilkes Tucker.

A flagship book of contemporary photographic publishing that was initially self-published by its author in two successive editions produced on an inkjet printer with 25 copies before being taken up by the Steidl publisher.

Alec Soth has been considered for two decades as one of the greatest American photographers, and this is his first work. He explored the Mississippi River from its source to its mouth, photographing both landscapes and marginalized individuals he encountered, as well as their interiors, giving them all their dignity. This documentary and poetic work conveys a constant atmosphere of solitude, nostalgia, and rêverie, very different from the image of America we know.

"I was a gloomy and introverted young man," Soth recounts about his early years, a dreamy and solitary young man struggling to realize his creative ambitions. Working in a photo processing laboratory for the general public, he had (almost) given up on the ambition of becoming an artist. He lived in a city on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Reading a biography of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, Alec Soth visits the childhood home of the renowned aviator, 150 kilometers from his own home in Little Falls, a small town also on the Mississippi River, and photographs his modest bed. As a child, Charles Lindbergh and his father had considered traveling by boat along the Mississippi. Soth thinks about the few photos he has taken of the river and decides to make it the central theme of his photographic project. The Mississippi is one of the largest rivers in the world, stretching 3,800 kilometers, and it connects 31 central states of the United States across a territory roughly six times the size of France.

Alec Soth is also inspired by Mark Twain's book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where a young boy flees civilization with a runaway black slave. He recounts their wandering of over 1,200 kilometers on a raft down the Mississippi.

The photographer begins by following the Mississippi River in his car, driving from one place to another, with a list of keywords stuck to the steering wheel. He will stop whenever something catches his attention and 'using the river as a route for encounters.' 'A miraculous period in my life,' is how Soth describes this process. He felt warmly welcomed in the region. As the Mississippi flows southward, it becomes warmer and more open, he explains. It is also in the South that country music took root. The river and the people he meets allow him to move from one photo to another.

Most often, the people he stops with are dreamers a bit like him, marginal artists, and every time he photographs someone, he asks them to write a dream in a small notebook. One of them keeps building things, mainly model airplanes he keeps in his house. Another hangs his laundry as if it were a piece of art. Alec Soth also visits a prison where activities are planned, and he photographs a murderer who has a tattoo of a tear under his eye.

In Davenport, Iowa, Soth spots a building that looks like a brothel. He gathers his courage and enters, saying he's a photographer and will pay to take pictures. He's told, 'No need to pay. It's good publicity.' He spends hours there, photographing different rooms and several women, including a mother and her daughter.

Alec Soth is not very religious, but he photographs here a statue of Jesus on a cross attached to an electric pole, and there a tapestry depicting Christ.

Finally, death is a very prominent theme in Sleeping by the Mississippi, as shown by the images of this gas station in the foreground, which reveals in the background a cemetery with rudimentary graves among which children are playing.

Sleeping by The Mississippi is situated within the tradition of books that have shaped the history of photography, particularly Walker Evans' American Photographs, where cars are a recurring motif that provides a connecting thread. Soth uses beds in a similar way, and beds appear repeatedly in various contexts—either in bedrooms, the carcass of a bed in the bushes, or a mattress in the water—hence the title of the book.

Book from my personal collection, in excellent condition (like new), kept with the utmost care. Very secure protected shipping and guaranteed international postal tracking. In case of multiple purchases, combined shipping is possible with reimbursement of any excess postal fees paid via Paypal.

Weight excluding packaging: 2.1 kg.