Understatement

I have been really surprised by how much blogging Alec Soth has continued to do since beginning last month. I figured you'd have a post here or there, some gallery news, etc. But damn, Alec... thanks for putting your passions and thoughts out there and sharing with everyone; I've enjoyed the ride.

I've got to say, however, that his post about Christopher Anderson several weeks ago has stuck with me in a bad way every since I read it.

To explain, in the post Alec is trying to answer an interesting question about why a so-called "art photographer" like himself would choose to remain in Magnum Photos, the legendary documentary photography co-op. His take on this is great -- the art world is, relatively speaking, sort of bullshit, often fleeting, and sometimes shallow -- but then he does a "oh, and also Magnum has some pretty darn good young photographers too, like this guy Chris Anderson." (I'm paraphrasing, and doing a poor job of it).

The thing is that even calling Chris Anderson, at this moment in time, a good and important photographer is such a gross fucking understatement that it made me pretty disgusted to even read his kind post. It then made me laugh out loud at how I perceive this rant against the art world at being out of touch to be itself out of touch to the relative merit of Anderson's work.

Right now Chris Anderson is the greatest working photojournalist in the world, period. That's really what I think. Just about everything that I've seen of his in print and on the Magnum site for the last 9 months has absolutely leveled me. He's not even playing the same game as most of the other top guys... its a completely different feeling and depth. Looking at his work now has the same urgency, grace, and incredible genius in it for me as the first time I sat down with Delahaye's Winterreise in the middle of college and was changed. When me and my small group of die hard, cynical bastard photo friends talk these days, we go on and on and on about Anderson because he's that fucking amazing.

Maybe Alec's comment says something about his background, or his modesty... or maybe something else about Magnum, and its photographers' tradition of being pretty bad at delivering compliments to each other. (Image of Bruce Davidson beating his hands and feet on the ground like a baby flashes into my mind).

As it happens I really liked Niagara too, especially the images of the falls which somehow snuck up on me and were very emotional. But I gotta know... whose dong is that??

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