Arcana:

(SOTH, ALEC). Soth, Alec, Patricia Hampl & Anne Wilkes Tucker. Gottingen, GERMANY: Steidl, 2004. First Printing. 4to. Pictorial Cloth. Photography Monograph. As New/No Jacket - As Issued. np (120pp), 46 color illustrations + covers. Designed by Steidl Design. In a protective clear acetate dustwrapper. "Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Alec Soth's "Sleeping by the Mississippi" captures America's iconic yet oft-neglected "third coast". Soth's richly descriptive, large-format color photographs present an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes, and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, "Sleeping by the Mississippi" 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". Like Robert Frank's classic "The Americans", it merges a documentary style with a poetic sensibility. The Mississippi is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created out of a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust". A brand new, most handsome example of the 2004 Steidl true first printing (cited on page 50 of Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's "The Photobook: A History Volume II", page 58 of "From Fair to Fine: 20th Century Photography Books That Matter", and pages 149-150 of Fred Ritchin and Carole Naggar's "Magnum Photobook: A Catalogue Raisonné") featuring details from the image "Cape Girardeau, Missouri" reproduced on the front and rear covers additionally bearing the BOLDLY SIGNED PRESENTATION "To ... - / Alec Soth" in black ink on the front free endpaper. 3-86521-007-4 Inventory Number: 025744