Alec Soth, a Photographer Reborn: 'I Realised Everything is Connected'

THE GUARDIAN
By Sean O'Hagan

Nancy, Cincinnati.

In 2016, while on a working trip to Helsinki, the American photographer Alec Soth underwent what he calls “a full-on mystical experience” that precipitated a year-long sabbatical from work. “It was pretty far out, to the point where I find it embarrassing to talk about,” he says. When I press him, he recounts the story of sitting down by a lake to meditate, then having “this sudden realisation that everything in the universe was connected”. He pauses to gather his thoughts. “I know it sounds hippy-dippy, but it was incredibly intense. I was tearful and simultaneously filled with this almost overwhelming sense of joy.” In the wake of his Blakeian epiphany in Helsinki, Soth also found himself thinking a lot about the power dynamics of portrait photography. [More]