Watch: “The beauty of the form is its limitation”
Alec Soth discusses failure and the importance of making work for oneself in a new short film
Magnum Learn‘s second on-demand online course – Alec Soth: Photographic Storytelling – offers unique insight into Soth’s practice and process through more than five hours of exclusive video content featuring in-depth interviews, on-location shoots, practical demonstrations, and deep dives into his best-known photobooks.
Here we share a new short film, made in collaboration with NOWNESS for their ongoing Photographers In Focus series. In this short film directed by Joppe Rog and extracted from Soth’s full course, we hear the Magnum photographer discuss the allure of photography. Soth dwells on the difficulties of coming to terms with his own drive, the importance of being open to failure, and the difficulties of not meeting one’s own expectations. But crucially – he reflects that all of his best work came after he failed doing something else: failure leads you to “break new ground”.
You can learn more about the new Magnum Learn course, here, and watch the course trailer below.
