Alec Soth: Fashion Magazine (Paris Minnesota)

imageSonia, 2007 (from “Fashion Magazine”) © Alec SothimagePamela and Allen, 2007 (from “Fashion Magazine”) © Alec SothAlec Soth’s images from his new glossy Fashion Magazine (Paris Minnesota) have just been put on his website (thanks Eric). Previously, only scans from the work shot for W were available online.

While Fashion Magazine has a single photographer-author, it’s still a magazine, not a book. So it doesn’t follow my usual mode of slow, solitary production. It’s collaboration. The ideas for the collaboration were formulated very quickly. I was approached by the folks at the Paris office of Magnum to work on this issue late last year. I immediately said yes. I was a huge fan of the previous two editions (by Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden) and was looking for an excuse to play with fashion. … I often say that when I am making a portrait, I’m not ‘capturing’ the other person. If the photograph documents anything, it is the space between the subject and myself. Something similar is at work with Fashion Magazine. I’m not really comfortable saying I know anything about Paris or its fashion world. And I suspect that most fashionable Parisians know just as little about Minnesota. What is interesting is the space between us. My favorite example of this involves Chanel. In Paris, I photographed Karl Lagerfeld at the Grand Palais. In Minnesota, I photographed a girl with a Chanel shopping bag in front of Sally’s Beauty Shop. With this magazine, I’m trying to explore the distance between those two places.
Preorder your copy of the magazine (signed) here. There’s only one run of these – so when they’re gone, they’re gone. View the photographs here.