What do you like about his work? I skimmed through one of his books (Sleeping by the Mississippi I think it was called) in a local photo book shop and found nothing that appealed to me.
Perhaps it's because the world he moves in and the characters he's interested in are completely alien to me and my culture.
But then again I am fascinated by e.g. Eggleston and Robert Adams who are also depicting places and ways of being that are really remote to me, so the above is probably not the reason why I haven't been able to appreciate Soth's output.
Interesting that you mention Eggleston. I find similarities between him and Soth. The approach of
Sleeping by the Mississippi is not that far from Eggleston's
Election Eve or his
Guide, this last one having many photographs from Mississippi. Put Eggleston's
Guide next to Soth's
Sleeping by the Mississippi and you'll see the lineage.
They are both interested in the landscape and it's relation with history, both are attracted by the vernacular, and both engage with the people they meet in a similar matter, i.e., as if they were one of many elements—with the cars, the roads, the rivers, the houses, the city scape, various objects, etc.—that is part of the landscape that, as a whole, defines community in general. You don't get a full sense of who they are, but you do get a strong sense of their
belonging where they are, and thus a
feeling of what that place is about. Difference might just be that Soth engages with them at times on a more intimate level than Eggleston does.
Biggest difference, to me, is in the format. Can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something that makes the frame of Eggleston's 35mm act very differently than Soth's 8x10.
This is a photograph of William Eggleston by Alec Soth: