The first image that appears in Alec Soth’s new photobook Advice for Young Artists is a green Post-It note with the words “WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?” scrawled across it. That question, left unanswered, essentially serves as the artist’s preface. From the outset it’s clear that advice, at least in the traditional sense, will be elusive.
Anyone familiar with Soth’s wide-ranging, intellectually driven output, from his groundbreaking 2004 monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi through his most recent collection, A Pound of Pictures, should be well prepared to take this journey with him. In a sense, this book is a kind of spiritual sequel to Soth’s 2010 book Broken Manual, another “how-to” guide that avoids practical advice. Yet whereas the protagonists of Broken Manual were retreating from the world, the young artists in Advice are preparing to enter into it.
For this book, Soth spent time with students in various art programs across the United States. Yet, rather than simply document the current generation of art school kids, Soth used this as an opportunity to explore and to invigorate his own artistic process as well. It’s a great hook for a project, executed at a very high level.
Soth’s sensitive portraits of individual art students comprise slightly over a third of the book. These images have a wonderfully intimate, collaborative quality to them. Looking at them, August Sander’s work springs to mind. One clear parallel to Sander’s taxonomical approach is that none of these students are identified by name. Each photograph thereby becomes not just a portrait of a specific person but also a representation of a certain type of person—the art school student.
One standout portrait features a young man at an easel. Compositionally, the picture is rigorously balanced. The painter is bordered on both sides by paintings. On the left, a series of staples adhering the canvas to the frame move upward in a straight line like marching ants before taking a sharp right turn. Another easel on the right, angled at a slight diagonal, painting side towards the viewer, helps ensure the eye goes immediately to the artist’s expression. The viewer takes in his downcast eyes and contemplative countenance just before noticing the band-aid on his forehead. Then his dreadlocks, freckles and facial hair, the arc of a gold chain around his neck, and his bright yellow t-shirt. Taken together, these elements are riveting and a little mysterious—one can’t help but want to know more about him.
Adding further dimension, a number of photos feature student works, both in progress and in situ. On display are cliches and experiments, the commonplace and the unusual, the various half-finished attempts of young students striving to find their voices. Taken cumulatively, they are emblematic of that formative time in an artist’s career when what one lacks in experience and mastery, one makes up for with passion and effort.
These still life pictures of students’ artwork are taken from the perspective of someone silently exploring this world yet disconnected from it. Significantly, there are no students present in those photos. On the other hand, Soth himself can be glimpsed lurking in the background of several–and in the foreground of one, which highlights a bust of what appears to be an elderly, emaciated man.
Such photos are infused with a high degree of self-consciousness. Whether behind or in front of his medium format digital camera, Soth positions himself, very deliberately, as an outsider. He seems to perceive himself as trespassing through a space where he no longer quite belongs, perhaps at least partly due to age and experience. (Not merely performative, this comes across as a genuine sentiment.) There’s a wistfulness present in these pages: One gets the sense that, although he may not be able to go back to this stage in his life, he would very much like to.
Pictures of colored Post-It notes that Soth has written “advice” on appear interspersed throughout, breaking up the sections. Several are like Zen koans (“Patience etc.” reads one) and there’s a very deliberate cringe factor to this conceit that alludes to the type of fatuous work likely to pop up in a class critique. But it’s the note at the end—“Make me young, Make me young, Make me young!” (a quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Breakfast of Champions) that makes the project’s thesis explicit. This is Soth’s reckoning as he comes to terms with his current stage in his career and life.
So, to go back and attempt to answer the question posed at the start, I believe this book is for anyone interested in the process of becoming an artist (however one defines that term). Anyone committed to the journey of self-discovery, anyone grappling with questions around age and experience. And, probably, anyone taking the time to read this review. It will have different resonances for older individuals than it will for younger ones, so it will be worth revisiting. It’s a fine addition to Soth’s overall body of work, boasting some of his strongest images to date (which is really saying something)—and one of the most fascinating and original photobooks of the year.
Advice for Young Artists by Alec Soth. MACK, 2024. 72 pages. Hardcover.
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