Landscape Stories: You are best known for your large-scale American projects Sleeping by the Mississippi and Niagara, which took him across central America, from Iowa and Illinois to Missouri and Kentucky. Featuring images from portraits to bleak landscapes. Your language has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story behind the image. You find chemistry with strangers and photograph loners and dreamers. What usually inspired you?
Alec Soth: For better or worse, I'm an inward looking photographer. I make my pictures out in the world, but the motivation is almost always interior. So the big projects are usually some sort of intuitive response to whatever state of mind I'm in at a given time.
Landscape Stories: You move between New York, the central America and the Minnesota, working at the center is different than working in the suburbs?
Alec Soth: Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this question. I live in Minnesota. I've actually never photographed in New York. But I do indeed travel a lot to photograph.
Landscape Stories: YouTell me about your travel and the 'Dog Days Bogotà' serie realize, in 2002, to Bogotà.
Alec Soth: I made this work at the time when my wife and I were adopting our daughter. I wasn't planning on doing a project. But we were in Colombia for a couple of months and I found myself looking at this place through the lens of the adoption experience. I don't consider this work a documentary of Bogotà whatsoever.
Landscape Stories: Tell me about the dogs, how did they become so important?
Alec Soth: There were a lot of street children in Bogotà, but I didn't want to photograph them. The dogs were a sort of stand-in for the street children.
Landscape Stories: The dogs and the children make some of the images playful yet almost all of them have a sadness, is this what you saw in Bogotà?
Alec Soth: For me, beauty is always wrapped up in sadness. So I seem to be drawn to that wherever I go. I wouldn't say that Bogotà is any sadder than any other place. This was just what my eye was drawn to.
Landscape Stories: What is your favourite photo of the serie?
Alec Soth: My favorite photo is probably the girl holding a doll on a hill. A lot of people think this is a picture of my daughter. But Carmen was only 2 months old when we adopter her. However, Carmen sort of looks like that girl now. For what it is worth, Carmen's favorite picture is of the girl with all of the stuffed animals on the wall.
Landscape Stories: The serie is, also, a pilgrimage, I ride that many pictures were made on Cerro de Monserrade, a mountain overlooking the city. Can you tell me better about this choice of the place and what do you want communicate?
Alec Soth: Yes, this pilgramage is made to give thanks to God. In my own way, I wanted to thank God, or Bogotà, so someone, for this incredible gift.
Landscape Stories: Having said all of this, it seems that the question of landscape and where it comes from is one that is calling you.
Alec Soth: My work is all about moving through the world. It is less about the landscape than the movement through it. When it comes to pure landscape photography, I don't think I'm very good.
Landscape Stories: Looking at the serie I also konw elements of a novel by Cormac McCarthy, a perfect vision of the contemporary America where Spanish element lives with the idea of the wild border. What do you think?
Alec Soth: Very interesting. Cormac McCarthy is such an incredible writer. And yes, this idea of riding the edge of things is very appealing to me.
Landscape Stories: Has this body of work changed the way you look at the world or is it a kind of visualization of it?
Alec Soth: Every picture is an act of discovery. It is all about change.
Interview curated by Camilla Boemio