Niagara

Following on from his critically acclaimed first monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth turned his gaze to another plane iconic water feature, Niagara Falls. As with his photographs of the Mississippi, Soth's images of Niagara are less of a question of natural wonder than of human desire. "I went to Niagara for the same reason as newlyweds and suicides," explains Soth, "the incessant thunder of the falls just calls for great passion." Working for two years on the American and Canadian sides of the falls using a 8x10 large format camera, the photographs are rigorously composed and richly detailed. Soth depicts newlyweds and naked lovers, motel parking lots and pawn shop wedding rings. All Throughout the book, Soth interspersed a number of love letters from subjects he photographed. We read stories of crushes of adolescence, business at work, heartbreak and suicide. Oscar Wilde has wrote about the falls: "The sight of the magnificent cascade must be one of the oldest, if not the most acute, disappointments of married life American." At Soth's Niagara we see both passion and disappointment. His images are a remarkable representation of modern love and its consequences.