Alec Soth: A Room of Rooms

The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum is pleased to present a solo exhibition of the photographer Alec Soth, born in 1969 in Minnesota, US. A full member of the international photography collective Magnum Photos, Soth has earned global acclaim for his narrative-driven photographs, often depicting scenes from his native Midwest region of the United States.

Titled A Room of Rooms, the exhibition showcases a wide range of Soth’s photographs, from Sleeping by the Mississippi, the artist’s first published series, which typifies his early works, to Advice for Young Artists, his most recent endeavor, set to be issued this fall. However, it is not merely a retrospective of Soth’s career, which spans 30 years. The museum has curated this selection of scenes shot almost entirely indoors so as to reinterpret his oeuvre with the theme of “rooms.”

Among the works in the exhibition are those from the series I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating. Drawing its title from a line in Wallace Stevens’s (1879–1955) poem “Gray Room,” the series was compiled into a photo book in 2019, marking a turning point in Soth’s career. Initially, Soth’s work took him across his homeland by car, capturing landscapes and people he encountered with a large-format camera, but this series represents a departure from the road-trip approach. Soth traveled to various parts of the world, visiting various figures such as the late dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin (1920–2021) and the novelist Hanya Yanagihara (b. 1974), and shooting their portraits and personal belongings in the personal spaces where they spend much of their time. This focus on rooms and their occupants provided the impetus for this exhibition.

I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating captivates viewers with its intimate portrayals of subjects in tranquil settings. The evocative title seems to express Soth’s empathy with his subjects as he captured these moments, and to reflect our own emotional engagement with the works in this “room of rooms,” i.e., the museum gallery.

The artist explains, “While I regularly take photograph portraits, landscapes and still lifes, the genre I feel most connected to is the interior.” What will become visible to us as we explore the various rooms and encounter their inhabitants? Soth’s exhibitions and photo books have thus far earned widespread acclaim, and this exhibition delves further into the power of his art.

Organisers
Curated by Ito Takahiro (Curator, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum)
Organized by Tokyo Photographic Art Museum operated by Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture
Sponsored by the Corporate Membership of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

More details here.

For press: If you have any press enquiries about this exhibition, please contact our Department of Public Relations—press-info@topmuseum.jp.