Large format color. Soth is an inspiration. From Amazon:

Evolving from a series of road trips along the Mississippi River, Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi captures America's iconic yet oft-neglected "third coast." Soth's richly descriptive, large-format color photographs present an eclectic mix of individuals, landscapes, and interiors. Sensuous in detail and raw in subject, Sleeping by the Mississippi elicits a consistent mood of loneliness, longing, and reverie. "In the book's 46 ruthlessly edited pictures," writes Anne Wilkes Tucker, "Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex." Like Robert Frank's classic The Americans, Sleeping by the Mississippi merges a documentary style with a poetic sensibility. The Mississippi is less the subject of the book than its organizing structure. Not bound by a rigid concept or ideology, the series is created out of a quintessentially American spirit of wanderlust. The coherence of the project places Soth's book exactly within the tradition of Walker Evans' American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans

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I finished this book a while ago and forgot to put it up. Now Joerg has a nice interview with Alec. I'm glad I waited.

A Conversation with Alec Soth

AS: I am able to make the switch pretty easily, but they are indeed two entirely different ways of working. A huge part of my personal work is finding my subject. This involves daydreaming, wandering, editing and reshooting...it takes forever. The process is introspective and I always work alone. With editorial photography the subject is handed to me on a platter. The editor usually tells me to go take a picture of 'x'. A lot of the art is stripped out of the process. The only thing that is left is the technical job of making a great picture. Because time is limited, I usually require the help of assistants. So why do I do editorial photography? It certainly isn't for the money. First, I believe it is healthy to do work outside of the art world. I don't trust art world success. Take a look at a 15 year old Whitney Biennial catalogue and see how many names you recognize. It all seems so trendy and fleeting. Moreover, I like to participate in the public discourse. I have a real hermetic streak and often fantasize about holing up in a cabin in Nova Scotia to do finger-painting. Assignment work keeps me going out into the world to meet people and make pictures. Finally, magazine work is just good practice. I once had a great conversation about this with Robert Polidori. Robert used to play in a rock band. He said that editorial work is like going on the road. Often you are playing in an empty bar in a nowhere town and wonder 'why am I doing this?' All of those gigs make you stronger – more ready for the big gigs, the arenas and the studio sessions.

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