Bastard Countryside and Sleeping by the Mississippi - A Narrative Comparison of the Beauty of People and Places Lost in Translation

Each time Alec Soth set out driving along the river with his 8 x 10 large format camera, I wonder if he knew what he would find. Or what he was looking for. Sleeping by the Mississippi is a body of work created around a series of road trips that Soth took along the Mississippi River between 1999 and 2002.

Robin Friend's Bastard Countryside is his search for the juxtaposition of nature with things man made, at the fringes of British townscapes. A mix of curiosity and anxiety meticulously captured by a 5 x 4 camera.

Looking at both works, the feelings I have seem to stem from the depicted landscapes in these photographs - the land that has existed in each space before and after the footfalls of civilization.

Friend's pictures depict an almost derelict beauty in man's decades long impact on the land he inhabits. There is a sense of scale that I have never before seen captured in a single frame. An image of a dead whale lying on a stony beach, its blood having reddened the nearby waters; the large rusting shipwreck with its stark contrast of the orange of rotting metal with the emerald of the sea; or the extraordinary image of a pile of scrap metal and cars floating in a lake at the bottom of a mine. In 1975 the Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition called New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. To me, Friend's work is an extension of that same typology transposed upon the current context of our environment.

Soth's work is an abstraction on the effect of the land on its inhabitants. On examination one begins to see the faint outlines of an indefinable subculture forming in the region around the river. There is a sense of lingering melancholy in every frame. One of unfulfilled dreams. "Did the river take it all away?", I ask myself. Religion and faith appear as major motifs throughout the book - a crutch supporting the weight of the lost aspirations of a people. Or a distraction from them. It reminds me of the depiction of Louisiana in the first season of the HBO crime drama True Detective. It's as if Soth has breached the layers of concealment hidden to us and exposed a subtle but sinister quality to the lives of the people that occupy the pages of his book.

Through his photographs, Friend is asking questions of our conscience. And our responsibility to the world we cohabit. It warrants a commitment to the future. Soth's work, instead, is beyond the tangible moralities of our existence.  In it, there is no judgement. A river. And a people, forgotten.

The colours in the photographs in both bodies of work have been edited to make a stronger impression on the viewer and for the pictures to better embody the ideas of their respective artists. This manipulation is masterful in both documentaries.

Bastard Countryside was a result of 15 years of Friend's travels across the English landscape. Sleeping by the Mississippi took Soth 3 years to bring to completion. I imagine it not having been very easy. This persistence shines through in these surreal images. And the results are equal parts fascinating and magnificent.

Bastard Countryside by Robin Friend was published by Loose Joints in 2018. It is currently out of print with last copies still available from the publisher.

Sleeping by the Mississippi by Alec Soth was first published by Steidl in 2004. It was republished by MACK in 2017.