Two New Books

Alec Soth discusses "The Color of a Flea’s Eye: The Picture Collection" by Taryn Simon and "In Plain Air" by Irina Rozovsky.⁣
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[peterpcarroll]

These videos are such a public service - an education

[Raevenswood]

I really like Irina Rozovsky's work. I have a few of her books and I enjoy revisiting them periodically. One of my art professors in college had her as a student when he was teaching on the East Coast so he got her to do a talk for us, which was really cool. Regarding her use of film I remember seeing a recording of a lecture that she gave over zoom where someone asked the dreaded "what camera did you use?" question (I would be lying if I said I wasn't curious myself 😂) and she mentioned that she shot In Plain Air on a Pentax 67 with the 105mm and 90mm lenses.

[mattdayphoto]

Hey Alec! I’m actually in Minneapolis now until Wednesday to sign and ship out my book. If the offer still stands, I’d love to swing by St. Paul to say hey and give you a copy of my book.

[dacnard]

Thank you Alec for all these videos. I rarely ever comment on videos but I wanted to share with you how much I have learned and how I appreciate your insight on what you love. I purchased my first ever photograph from the Magnum sale event you mentioned in your last video as my way to support your effort.

[frankv.]

These are some illuminating videos. Thanks for everything, Alec. You've given me a tremendous amount of inspiration and drive to go out and create my own art. I'm a fan for life.

[PresleyMartin]

In Plain Air really has the feel and insight of someone that has visited a place over and over. Thanks for introducing me to these two books and artists.

[juliend]

Amazing two books! Thanks for sharing them Alec!

[michaelkartes]

Thanks again for all this wonderful stuff, Alec. I'm beginning to grasp how being engaged with your channel (as I very much am) is going to be a costly, but no doubt worth it, endeavor. Cheers!

[tipibookshop]

as a book shop owner I NEED to ask people to draw their book request !!! amazing idea

[ZisisKardianos]

Combining nature, formal portraits and spondaneous moments in a single body can work really well and Rozovsky's book is another case in point. The fact that is so obviously made with film and probably with medium format cameras, makes it even more appealing to my eyes. I couldn't avoid recalling the famous Arbus "boy holding grenade" picture when I saw the image of the boy hanging from a tree branch, which is odd because the two pictures are so different in tone. One more obvious "influence" or simply association is Tod Papageorge's book "Passing through Eden. Photographs of Central Park".

[fotobot]

Thank you for making these videos Alec! Soothing, exhilarating, slow, refreshing, ....all at the same time! If you ever lack an idea for a new topic...I would love to hear your thoughts on the photographic stil life.

[andyl]

Just ordered In Plain Air! Enjoy your videos.

[keltonfloyd]

Hi Alec! I'm an aspiring photographer from Brasilia, Brazil. I just discovered your channel and lately I've been watching your videos a lot. It's a very special way to talk about photography and even when you talk about gear specifics like focal length and stuff you always manage to link these topics to creative aspects of photography, which is something very valuable when you want to transform technique into art. Thank you very much for your effort, these videos are changing the way I see things here.

[bowenisland]

Thank you for this....just a great series!

Hello Alec. As I watched your presentation of the first book, I remembered Aby Warburg Atlas Mnemosyne. It is a great job of image analysis and its importance as a memory and archive. In this respect, photography on paper, in physical support is important. The screen is an unsupportable support, in the sense that it contains no image and has all of them. The screen is a support that refers to speed and vibration. The screen is always promoting the change. It is a nervous support. Optically nervous. It is not a place. It is the reverse of a vehicle. He is standing at a table and the "landscape" passes through the "window".
With my students, I always ask them to do contact print in laser print. You can see multiple images at the same time, impossible on screen. You can choose and edit the work. Then, print the photo inkjet. This transition from screen to paper is very important and students love it.

[MichaelCroghan]

Love the resourcefulness of that first book, must have good charm to get, access or maybe some of it made up proccess of a library. It's like the family of man idea regarding photographic library archiving guts and all. The images sequenced in literal terms of what is physically in image. And together show man in a cross section of type and quality of image, that is an epic curated book. Second one remind me but not as subtle as Robert Adams on place and space, but not the less for it but actually a pleasureable book of images. Theme for me running through them both is the very nature of photography, fragmentary, They will always be seen in isolation. Thank you again for the free joy of your time and library and knowledge

[jamesperu]

Great video. Love the way you used one work to add context to the other.

[ThomasHawk]

A wonderful presentation of these two beautiful books, thank you Alec. In terms of "the Color of a Flea's Eye" I felt a strong affinity with Javitz and her desire to categorize and collect images. As an organizational comparison, immediately I thought of the digital ability to create unlimited numbers of collections and albums using Flickr. I've made over 4, 000 albums myself at this point and like Javitz have organized many of them by subject matter. The ability to edit and curate and organize and categorize is such an interesting human trait. Incredibly impressed with Javitz and her life's work and Simon's presentation of her work. Looking forward to enjoying both of these books physically myself. "An impossible goal beautiful in its ambition, " loved that description. Am really enjoying your videos and look forward to what is coming next each Friday.

[Stefd]

Thank you again for this great and interesting lecture!

[jameshendrick]

I've read that incorporating a tint into the palette is one of the fundamental ways of increasing color harmony in painting. It shows up in cinematic color grading as well, of course, and as a post-processing technique in digital photography (Fuji appears to have baked it into their film simulations), I suppose at least partly for the same reason. But I would guess that the casts that film produces are more complex than what we get with the tools in, say, Lightroom.

The purer yellows we'd get in the trees with a digital capture--this relates to complexity, too. I think painters are also taught that purity of color and richness of color are directly opposed to each other. To create rich color, you have to layer subtly varying hues over top of one another. The complex interaction of all those hues, in the mind, is then what creates the impression of richness and depth (which would mean that, unlike color purity, they are not directly measurable). I think this is why weathered surfaces can produce such captivating richness of color--the weathering imparts the requisite variation. And why leather shoes look so beautiful after being regularly brushed for years.

Digital capture excels at producing pure colors, and that is eye-grabbing. But the fugitiveness of film color may lead naturally to greater color harmony, richness, and depth. I would bet that these qualities do more to hold our attention in an image once it's there.