Quotes from Alec Soth

I always say that photography's closest cousin is poetry because of the way it sparks your imagination and leaves gaps for the viewer to fill in.

[Photography is] very related to poetry. It's suggestive and fragmentary and unsatisfying in a lot of ways. It's as much about what you leave out as what you put in.

We all confront the parameters of our cage eventually. What we do when we reach those bars helps define us.

Picture yourself on a surfboard. Once you find your balance, loosen your grip. Breathe. Accept that no matter how good you think you are, you will fall. Again and again. - We take pictures not only to see, but to be seen; not only to remember, but to be remembered. But when you are surfing, it's best to forget about the people on the beach.

When burdened by the feeling that there are too many photographs in the world, I ask myself if there are too many flowers.

Photography, for me, is a lot like web surfing in real life.

For good work to develop the technology needs to become as stable and functional as a typewriter.

I fell in love with the process of taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.

If you want to be a creative person, then you're gonna have to be creative in how you put your career together. There isn't a path. Part of the creativity is making your path.

The people that I photographed allowed me to photograph them because they didn't want to be alone, and the truth is I didn't want to be alone making the pictures.

Nobody really wants to be alone. People need people.

I admire photographers that don't need a destination. In some ways, street photography is like that. There's a quality of wanderlust for sure in my work, but I need a destination.