Alec Soth '88

"Breck Changed My Life"

In a lot of ways, Alec Soth ’88 is a walking advertisement for Breck.

“Being at Breck absolutely changed my life,” he says. “I started in seventh grade and was really lost. In ninth grade I took art from Bill Hardy and woke up. I wasn’t the most social kid, and he taught me how to use that in a creative way. To this day, I use lessons he taught me.”

He did sculpture and painting at Breck and even had a gallery show (along with Andrea Specht ‘88) his senior year. “I had so much encouragement, I thought I was Picasso,” he laughs.

Says Bill Hardy, who was at Breck from 1985-1990 and is currently art department head at Millbrook Academy in New York,  “I am extremely pleased and honored to be a part of his life, and I remember with great fondness our time together at Breck.”

In college at Sarah Lawrence he discovered photography and the process of documenting the things he saw. After graduation he found steady work documenting collections at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which supported his early efforts at pursuing his own artistic photography.

“By 2002, I was ready to go off on my own and I got extraordinarily lucky very fast,” Alec says. Since then he has been the recipient of several major fellowships and was awarded the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His work is represented in collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He has published four books and been featured in both the Whitney and Sao Paolo Biennials. In 2010, he will have a touring show that will begin at the Walker.

Alec enjoys traveling for his art -- he has just returned from a road trip through the American west, which was filmed by a crew making a documentary about his work.  But he is happy to live in Minnesota. “I really don’t feel like a Parisian in Paris,” he explains. “Real people here are just as beautiful, and the most amazing things take place after aimless wandering anywhere.”

His wife Rachel (whom he met at Breck during her one year as a student here), daughter Carmen and son August keep him grounded in the Twin Cities. So does his determination not to let success go to his head. “I’ve made a name for myself, but I know it could all come crashing down,” he says.

His Breck teacher, however, might disagree. Bill Hardy calls Alec “an extremely gifted artist and photographer. He has a special way of identifying the authenticity, integrity and dignity of people and their lives. His work is soulful and honest, and his photography is unique, accessible and artistically significant. Alec Soth is and will be a prominent fixture in the world of art, and Breck should be very proud.”

Alec was honored with Breck's Distinguished Alum Award in 2008. You can learn more about Alec’s work through his website, alecsoth.com.