I just picked a copy of
Alec Soth's
Dog Days Bogotá at the
Harvard Bookstore. In keeping with
Sleeping By The Mississippi &
Niagara,
Dog Days is a beautifully assembled monograph that continues to expose Soth's diversity as a truly exploratory artist. He has made some distinctly different presentational choices with
Dog Days, opting for a smaller, more intimate format and less descriptive writing to inform the images. Soth's decision to incorporate less writing is appropriate in this instance, not because the images speak more powerfully without explanation but because the creation as a whole feels more personal and less emotionally definable. The series was created in an effort to present Soth's adopted daughter Carmen with a visual document of her native culture. He writes:
Carmen's birthmother gave her a book filled with letters, pictures and poems. "I hope that the hardness of the world will not hurt your sensitivity," she wrote, "When I think about you I hope that your life is full of beautiful things."
For anyone interested, you can buy a copy of
Dog Days Bogotá here. I highly recommend it.
From Top to Bottom:
Untitled 12, Bogotá
Untitled 05, Bogotá
Untitled 29, Bogotá
Untitled 07, Bogotá
All Images © Alec Soth
