BOLDTYPE ISSUE #55: Artwork By
Alec Soth
The cover of this issue of Boldtype is a detail of Alec Soth's photograph Untitled 04 from the book Dog Days Bogotá, published by Steidl in 2007 and distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. In late 2002, photographer Alec Soth traveled with his wife to Bogotá, Colombia, to receive their newborn adoptive daughter, Carmen Laura. As a parting gift, Carmen's birth mother prepared a book of letters, pictures, and poems to serve as a link between Carmen's life in America and the family she would leave behind in Colombia. Faced with a two-month stay in the capital while the courts processed the adoption papers, Soth set out to create a book of his own that would augment his daughter's inheritance.
On the fifth anniversary of his family's journey, Soth published Dog Days, Bogotá. The book is Soth's third monograph with Steidl, after his critically acclaimed debut in 2004, Sleeping by the Mississippi, and the 2006 follow-up, Niagara.
Soth begins the volume with a beautiful photograph of baby Carmen Laura nude, looking infinitely precious on a bed of grass below a blush of purple flowers. He concludes the series with a note thanking the kind people of Bogotá who helped make the images possible — particularly the generous woman whose act of "selfless love" was the project's inspiration.
Between the loving picture of his daughter and the tender note of gratitude, Soth assembles a quiet selection of images that are attuned to the continual progression of birth, life, and death in the city of the girl's birth. He focuses his pictorial eye on the small and the vulnerable, repeatedly capturing stray puppies, young families, and the elderly as they navigate the impoverished, though lively urban landscape.
The untitled photograph that serves as the cover of this issue of Boldtype is of a young couple walking their own baby daughter. With an air of adolescent machismo, the teenage father proudly wraps his arms around his bride, asserting himself as the head of this household, despite the look of fear and innocence in his eyes. Given the circumstances that led to the creation of this photograph, the young man and woman serve as apt stand-ins for the photographer and his wife, who have also just taken on the daunting responsibility of parenthood.
- Adda Birnir
