Alec Soth – Summer Nights at the Dollar Tree

Alec Soth encountered Robert Adams’s 1985 monograph Summer Nights as a young photographer, and the book was, in his words, a “gateway drug” to the “harder stuff” in Adams’s body of work. When asked to participate in Aperture Remix, an exhibition for which artists were commissioned to create new work in response to Aperture publications that were influential in their artistic development, Soth chose Summer Nights.

This video is Soth’s response to Adams, and was featured in the 2012 Aperture Remix exhibition at Aperture Gallery.

[theundefinedphotographer]

This is exactly the way that I approach seeing people and the spaces they occupy. I've been trying to search for a name for this kind of style that I've been trying to express and create, so I'm so happy to learn about Alec Soth and Robert Adams who I can turn to for inspiration.

[jimbarber]

Powerful stuff. I remember when I finally "got" Robert Adams. I was gutted. This short film evokes the very same emotions.

[allcitiesarebeautiful]

I watched it for the 3rd time now and it still doesn't cease to amaze me! Fantastic film!

[michaelweaver]

They paved paradise...and put up a parking lot meets: the hissing of summer lawns.

[dunerino]

strangely there's also this other Robert Adams - a disciple of Ramana Maharshi, which would've also loved this video I'm pretty sure...

[Peshur]

Most people are conditioned to looking at a screen in a certain way the time sense, the edit....from their entire lives of TV watching. Above is a rejection of that way of seeing the world. The ordinary the everyday is right there.

[robertocollo]

... and in 2017 Alec Soth invented the photography in motion.