后记 | AFTERWORD
”每一张床都变得空空荡荡”。John Berryman
我在路易斯安那州长大，我常会坐在密西西比河岸边，观察河里来往的石油和化学精炼厂的船只，拖船在河湾附近牵引相连的驳船，渡轮载着汽车和行人从我的家乡Baton Rouge驶向西岸。乘坐渡轮时，我看到漂浮物在水中打旋，水是深棕色的，仅仅能看到水面以下不到一英尺深的地方。有时在轮渡码头，我会和一位老传教士交谈，他至少从密西西比河的源头到口岸走过两次，他的腿因意外而瘫痪，只能拄着拐杖走路。他站在轮渡码头招呼人们接受洗礼，我做过一次，跪在河岸的淤泥中。[1]
我无法想象家乡北部远方都有什么，但我知道在我们下面是新奥尔良。这条河在“the Big Easy（奥尔良的戏称）”周围呈“U”形蜿蜒而行，高高的土堤挡住了它，保护 Dixieland 音乐的故乡、Cajun 巫毒教和法国区不被洪水侵袭。那里有精美的餐厅、脱衣舞俱乐部、历史悠久的大教堂和弥漫着大蒜味道的农夫市场。每年我们都会和父亲一起开车经过新奥尔良几次，沿着河道去散发着腐败气味，逼仄狭窄的Plaquemine教区，去拜访他的一位同事。我们会带着甜甜的路易斯安那橙子回家， 那是在自1927年教区大洪水后留下的为数不多的小树林中采摘的。当时是将新奥尔良下方的堤坝故意炸毁，才得以将这座城市从汹涌的河流中拯救出来。
六岁的时候，父母带我去看了电影 Show Boat，这是 Jerome Kern 和 Oscar Hammerstein 音乐剧的第三次重制，讲述了密西西比汽船上的生活。由于这条河及其传说是我生活中不可或缺的一部分，我很喜欢这部电影并记住了其中的音乐，尤其是由 William Warfield 演唱的 Ol'Man River，不过这首歌曲是在1936年的电影版中由Paul Robeson演唱而成名。我太小了，无法完全理解歌曲副歌中的哀叹，其中提到了种族主义和奴隶制。2 但出于本能我感受到歌曲丰富而缓慢的流动，以及它表达的河流比居住在其海岸和工作的人们更重要的本质。河流流经Baton Rouge附近时非常深，比该州当时最高的建筑，威猛高耸的议会大厦还宽五倍。当河流到达新奥尔良时，它已经深深潜入地面 25 层楼的深度，而且水流非常迅速，以至于任何落入的东西，包括尸体，在到达墨西哥湾之前都不大可能会重新浮出水面。所以我从小就被河流吸引又被并警告不要去接近它。
Alec Soth)生活在河流的北端，同样被它的力量、传说和宏大的身姿，以及它所激发的丰富文学遗产所吸引。沿着密西西比河跋涉，Soth对大城市或工业不感兴趣。有些最初是为河流贸易而建立的城市，小城镇，仍然依赖河流而存在。大多数城市都背弃了Algonquin印第安人所称的“水之父”。 [3] 由于对撰写河流及其周边地区的经济或社会政治文献并没有兴趣，Soth选择了某些诗歌中丰富的意象作为模型和他的照片的灵感。 “我认为诗歌，”他写道，“作为与摄影最相似的媒介……或者至少是我所追求的摄影。像诗歌一样，摄影很少成功。有了叙述。重要的是“声音”（或' eye') 以及这种声音将碎片拼凑成脆弱完整而美丽的东西的方式。”
摄影师面临的挑战是培养出一种“眼”或视角，使其成为他可识别的个人化的风格。工艺流程中的所有决策（相机、胶卷和相纸）都是为了增强这种视角。在整个项目中维持这种“眼”要困难得多，这样图片才能相互关联。同样，为了塑造和丰富整体而对图片进行排序也更难的一步。《眠于密西西比》是少有的实现了这一目标的书籍之一。密西西比河，大体上将Soth的照片联系在一起，但就像他之前的许多艺术家和作家一样，这条河作为隐喻的潜力激发了他的想象力。梦和梦想将他的照片统一起来。梦想，就像河流一样，运送我们，承诺自由和未知。索斯在他的书的开头是一张在明尼苏达州Little Falls市Charles Lindbergh的童年的床的照片，以及成年的Lindbergh关于睁着眼睛做梦的名言。然后，在整本书中，Soth 战略性地包含了床和床垫的照片，“就像 Lindbergh 的飞机和 Huck 的木筏……梦想的交通工具。”[5]
当然，梦并不是床所唤起的唯一联想，索斯的照片体现了丰富多样的可能指涉。例如，爱荷华州绿岛的病床可能首先会唤起人们对疾病的印象，然后才会想知道是什么狂热的梦想嘲弄了它的主人。或者，Johnny Cash少年时代的家里床的形象暗示了生育场所。然后，对于任何在路易斯安那州长大的人来说，这本书在Venice的最后一张照片会让人想起汗水和蚊子。为什么有人把一张床搬到离沼泽边缘这么近的地方？确定不是为了约会？确定不是由于对隐私的强烈需要，竟然为了片刻的欢愉同河边的蚊虫、蜱虫和其他害虫（包括蛇）赤裸相见？
在这本书的 46 张无情编辑的图片中，索斯暗示了疾病、生育、种族、犯罪、学习、艺术、音乐、死亡、宗教、救赎、政治和廉价的性行为。任何超越图片视觉美感的人都会注意到诸如马丁路德金的照片等细节，这些照片贴在孟菲斯的墙上，在那儿马丁路德金和他的梦想一起被暗杀。在另一张照片中，孟菲斯的玻璃金字塔从远处的一座桥上窥视。这座金字塔是由城市之父们怀着与埃及同名者相似的伟大梦想建造的，现在它代表着失败的梦想，由于现在它在被设计建造之初所承担的功能性已经丧失，它被遗弃了。同样在孟菲斯，索斯发现了这位年轻的黑人女性，她的职业不明，但从她穿着银色热裤躺在汽车旅馆的床上可以推测。和性相关的部分在他对来自达文波特的，几乎无法区分的母女的照片中，以及在 Sugar 家的 Hustler 杂志中再次被体现出来。然后是Herman's在在新奥尔良郊外的Kenner的床，地板上放着“看不见邪恶/听不见邪恶猴子（Three Wise Monkeys之二）”；在空调下放着裸体画。Herman's的梦想如此生动，是否是与我们自己的梦相契合？
在整本书中，圣经、十字架和耶稣的照片揭示了沿河大大小小的城镇中宗教的基石地位。安哥拉监狱的一名男子在他的 T 恤上用黑色墨水宣誓了自己是“传教士+男人”，这与人们通常认为的，印在他脱下的蓝色工作衬衫上监狱号码的去人格化效果形成反差。爱荷华州Buena Vista被钉在十字架上的基督像的恶化可能被解读为信仰失效。很难想象电线何时以及为何被接到十字架上，这使这张照片成为一个混合在一起的隐喻。
孤独与信仰同样贯穿整本书。旅行的孤独感在摄影史上对于那些离开工作室并旅行寻找主题的人来说是一种特有的感觉，Soth 经历过这些并在其他人身上识别出这种感觉。他没有拒绝或忽视它，而是寻找它，将其转化为同理心。把相机对准被人太容易了，这可能是苛刻和无情的。国家公共广播电台评论员Andrei Codrescu在观看Soth的书的模型时认出了Soth的“眼”，他写信给Soth说，他把他的研究对象唤醒了恰到好处的时间，刚好足以揭示“他们的睡眠质量是长久的、常常无梦，有时甚至是毫无希望的，毫无质量可言的沉睡” ，然后让他们重新陷入贫困的泥潭。” [6] 我并不认为Codrescu 雄辩的评论中的所表达的评判和驳斥是 Soth 的意图。工作时，他很意图明确，但不对抗或挑剔。显然，他有足够的魅力进入安哥拉监狱等臭名昭著的不对公众开放的地方，也可以进入人们的家中。三脚架上的 8 x 10 英寸相机不允许他隐身。与Frank、Lee Friedlander 和Garry Winogrand 等街头摄影师携带操作快速且易于隐藏的35 毫米相机不同，Soth 的设备需要仔细设置。然后在一块黑布下工作，Soth 必须计算相机的曝光和对焦设置。他的拍摄对象必须愿意摆姿势，而且必须要有耐心。如果他严厉地评判他们，他们不会没有感觉或会表现出不信任。相反，他们提供珍贵的物品，例如Charles的模型飞机和Bonnie的天使照片。但他们没有微笑。索斯等待他们不再在自我意识的作用下倾向微笑，等待他们放松回到他们的思想中，例如悲伤的年轻女子 Kym，她独自在酒吧间等待，讽刺地被情人节的爱心包围。Crystal，一个新奥尔良的异装癖者，为仪式摆精心打扮。她是一个大人物，在一间质朴的白色房间里，坐在一张画布上，描绘着她永远不会成为的那些精致的公主们。
Soth 将他在中西部的成长归因于一种比乐观更“黑暗和孤独”的情感。他向我介绍了诗人John Berryman，他于1972年1月从密西西比河的一座桥上跳下身亡。Soth特别注意到Berryman的“梦之歌 1”及其最后一行，“每一张床都变得空空荡荡”。索斯照片中的大多数床都是空的，同时唤起了所有过去的夜晚和未来的夜晚以及它们过去和未来的拥有者的一切遐想，激发我们对他们的故事和命运的想象。通常，Soth 会关注除了床以外的小细节，这些细节揭示了对住在河边的人来说什么是重要的，或者当家被遗弃时，什么是无关紧要被遗留下来的。有画作，比如新奥尔良的肖像。有一张美国西部河流的明信片，当一定更珍贵的盘子和饼干模具从墙上移开时留下的，留下了钉子和幽灵般的轮廓。
Soth 在大学期间进行了他的第一次从明尼阿波利斯到孟菲斯的河道冒险。那次旅行中的神奇之处依然鲜活，并激发了他最近的逗留，尤其是在他向南移动时看到土地开花的乐趣。在这些照片中，他指出文化也从冷到暖。 “明尼苏达州、爱荷华州、威斯康星州和我一样，”他写道，“确实保留了寒冷的地方。但是当你向南移动时，性格的温暖和开放会逐渐发展，直到最终成为新奥尔良街头的狂欢。”[7]
Soth 从未向我们透露他发现的狂欢，尽管一位名叫 Adelyn 的女人出现在圣灰星期三，在之前的“肥胖星期二”（通常称为狂欢节）的几个小时内一直在努力狂欢。他确实传达了越来越多的甘美植被和香气浓郁的花朵，以及河流接近海湾时最后的宽阔。在河流的壮丽下，他设定了夹在天地之间的小生命。诗人Jack Kerouac在为罗伯特·弗兰克的《美国人》撰写的序言中认为弗兰克“从美国汲取了一首悲伤的诗。”Alec Soth感受到了生存的悲伤。我再次被约翰·贝里曼（John Berryman）的“梦之歌 I：”所吸引。
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long
Wonder the world can bear & be.[8]
索斯“撬开”了他所经历的和他遇到的人，他想知道（并确认）这个世界可以承受和成为的。
休斯敦美术馆
荣誉馆长
Anne Wilkes Tucker
“and empty grows every bed...” John Berryman
Growing up in Louisiana, I would sit by the Mississippi watching river traffic: ships heading to and from the oil and chemical refineries, tug boats maneuvering linked barges around the river bends, and ferries crossing cars and pedestrians from my hometown Baton Rouge to the west side of the river. When riding the ferry, I watched flotsam swirl in water so brown and thick that one couldn't see more than a foot deep. Sometimes at the ferry landing, I talked to an old preacher who had walked the length of Mississippi from its source to its mouth at least twice, on legs so crippled by an accident that he could only walk aided by canes. He stood at the ferry landing beckoning people to be baptized, which I did once, sinking to my knees in the ooze of the riverbank.[1]
I couldn't imagine what lay far north of my hometown, but I knew that below us was New Orleans. The river snaked in a “U" around "the Big Easy," prevented by high earthen levees from washing away the home of Dixieland music, Cajun voodoo, and the French quarter, with its fine restaurants, strip clubs, historic cathedral, and farmer's market permeated with the smell of garlic. Several times a year we drove past New Orleans, down the river road to corrupt, mean-spirited Plaquemine Parish so that my father could visit an associate. We would return home with sweet, sweet Louisiana oranges, picked from the few groves that remained after much of the parish was devastatingly flooded in 1927. The levee below New Orleans had been intentionally dynamited to save the city from the rampaging river.
When I was six my parents took me to see the movie Show Boat, the third remake of the Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein musical about life on a Mississippi steamboat. As the river and its lore were an integral part of my life, I loved the movie and memorized the music, most especially Ol' Man River, sung then by William Warfield, but originally made famous by Paul Robeson in the 1936 film version. I was too young to fully understand the laments in the song's refrain, with its references to racism and slavery.[2] But I instinctively understood the rich, slow flow of the song, and its expression that the river was a greater essence than the people that populate its shores and work its course. When the river passes Baton Rouge, it is very deep, and five times wider than the height of the state's phallic capitol, then the tallest building in Louisiana. By the time the river reaches New Orleans it has carved a depth of twenty-five stories and the currents are so treacherously swift that whatever falls in, including bodies, may not resurface before reaching the Gulf of Mexico. So I grew up drawn to the river and warned against it.
Alec Soth lives at the northern end of the river and is equally drawn by its power, its lore and its physical grandeur as well as the rich legacy of literature that it has inspired. Trekking along the Mississippi, Soth wasn't interested in the large cities or industries. Few cities, or even small towns, that were originally founded for river commerce still rely on the river for their existence. Most cities have turned their backs to the "Father of Waters" as the Algonquin Indians named it.[3] With no interest in creating an economic or socio-political document about the river and its environs, Soth chose the rich imagery in certain poems as models and inspiration for his photographs. "I see poetry," he wrote, "as the medium most similar to photography...or at least the photography I pursue. Like poetry, photography is rarely successful. With narrative. What is essential is the "voice" (or 'eye') and the way this voice pieces together fragments to make something tenuously whole and beautiful."
A photographer's challenge is to develop an "eye" or point of view so personal that it becomes his recognizable style. All decisions of craft (camera, film, and photographic paper) are made to enhance that point of view. It is one step harder to sustain that "eye" throughout a project, so that the pictures are related one to the other, and again, a step harder for the pictures to be sequenced in an order that further shapes and enriches the whole. Sleeping by the Mississippi is one of those rare books that accomplishes this. The Mississippi River, or proximity to it, links Soth's pictures, but like many artists and writers before him, it's the river's potential as a metaphor that fueled his imagination. Dreams and dreaming unify his pictures. Dreams, like the river, transport us, promising freedom and the unknown. Soth begins his book with a photograph of Charles Lindbergh's boyhood bed in Little Falls, Minnesota and a quote by the mature Lindbergh about dreaming with one's eyes open. Then, throughout the book, Soth strategically includes photographs of beds and mattresses, which are "like Lindbergh's plane and Huck's raft...vehicles for dreaming."[5]
The coherence of the project places Soth's book exactly within the tradition of Walker Evans' American Photographs and Robert Frank's The Americans, two books that have shaped the history of photography. While there are many differences in the three books, each photographer repeatedly uses certain physical objects symbolically within individual pictures and within the sequence of the pictures. Soth uses beds the same way Evans used cars and artifacts of American popular culture in American Photographs and Frank employed automobiles and American flags in The Americans.
Dreams are, of course, not the only association evoked by the beds, and Soth's pictures embody the rich multiplicity of possible references. For instance, the hospital bed in Green Island, Iowa might first evoke images of illness, before one would wonder what feverish dreams taunted its occupant. Or, a bed as a site of procreation is implied in the image of Johnny Cash's boyhood home. Then, for anyone who grew up in Louisiana, the book's last picture in Venice evokes thoughts of sweat and mosquitoes. Why did someone carry a bed to that spot, so close to the edge of the marsh? Surely it was not for assignations? Surely the need for privacy was not so great that someone would bare themselves to the gnats, ticks and other vermin, including snakes, ever present by the river, just for a few moments of desire?
In the book's forty-six ruthlessly edited pictures, Soth alludes to illness, procreation, race, crime, learning, art, music, death, religion, redemption, politics, and cheap sex. Anyone who looks beyond the pictures' visual beauty will notice such details as the photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. taped to a wall in Memphis, where King's capacity to dream was assassinated. In another photograph, Memphis's glass pyramid peeks over a distant bridge. The pyramid, built by city fathers with dreams of greatness akin to their Egyptian namesake, now stands rather for failed dreams, as it is abandoned for the functions for which it was designed and built. Also in Memphis, Soth found the young black woman whose profession is unclear, but presumed, as she displays herself in silver lame hot pants lying on a motel bed. Sexuality is projected again in his picture of the almost indistinguishable mother and daughter from Davenport as well as by the Hustler magazine at Sugar's place. Then there is Herman's bed in Kenner, just outside New Orleans, with its 'see-no-evil/hear-no-evil monkeys' on the floor; and painted nudes under the air conditioner. Are Herman's dreams this vivid? Is there a parallel between where and what we dream?
Throughout the book, bibles, crosses and pictures of Jesus reveal the bedrock status of religion in towns large and small along the river. In black ink on his tee shirt, a man at Angola prison declares himself to be a "Preacher + Man," in opposition to the depersonalizing prison numbers one presumes are on the blue work shirt he has shed. The deteriorated condition of a crucified Christ figure in Buena Vista, Iowa, might be read as lapsed faith. And it is hard to imagine when and why the electrical wires were attached to the cross, making this picture a wildly mixed metaphor.
Loneliness is as present as faith throughout the book. The loneliness of travel is endemic in photography's history for those who leave the studio and travel in search of their subjects, Soth experienced it and recognized it in others. Rather than reject or ignore it, he sought it out, transforming it to empathy. It is all too easy to aim a camera, which can be harsh and unforgiving. When viewing a maquette of Soth's book, National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu recognized Soth's piercing "eye" and he wrote to Soth that he had woken his subjects just long enough to reveal "the immemorial, often dreamless, sometimes hopelessly trashy quality of their sleep, then let them sink back into the mud of their impecunious marginality."[6] The judgment and dismissal in Codrescu's eloquent observation is not really what I sense as Soth's direction. When working, he is clearly determined, but not confrontational or critical. He evidently has enough charm to gain access to places notoriously closed to the public, such as Angola prison, as well as into people's homes. An 8 x 10 inch camera on a tripod does not allow for stealth. Unlike street photographers, such as Frank, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, who carried the quick to operate and easy to conceal 35 mm camera, Soth's equipment needs to be set up. Then working under a black cloth, Soth must calculate the camera's settings for exposure and focus. His subjects must be willing to pose and they must be patient. If he is judging them harshly, they don't sense it or reveal distrust. Instead they proffer cherished objects such as Charles' model planes and Bonnie's photograph of an angel. But they aren't smiling. Soth waits out their self consciousness tendency to smile until they relax back into their thoughts, such as the sad young woman named Kym, who waits alone in a bar booth ironically surrounded by valentine hearts. Crystal, a New Orleans transvestite, poses dressed for church. She's a big person in a pristine white room, sitting on a spread picturing all the dainty princesses she will never be.
Soth attributes his mid-western upbringing to a sensibility that is more "dark and lonely" than optimistic. He referred me to the poet John Berryman, who leapt to his death from a Mississippi River bridge in January of 1972. Soth particularly noted Berryman's "Dream Song 1" and its last line, "and empty grows every bed." Most of the beds in Soth's pictures are empty, simultaneously evoking all past and future nights as well as past and future occupants, fueling our imagination about their stories and their fates. Often, Soth focuses on the little details other than beds that reveal what mattered to those who live along the river, or what didn't matter enough to pack when a home was abandoned. There are paintings, such as the portrait in New Orleans. There's the postcard of a river in the American West, left behind when what must have been more treasured plates and cookie cutters were removed from the wall, leaving the nails and ghostly outlines.
Soth made his first river road venture from Minneapolis to Memphis when he was in college. What was magical on that trip remained vivid and has inspired his recent sojourns, especially the pleasure of watching the land bloom as he moved south. In these pictures, he notes there is also a cultural shift from cold to warm. "Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin are like me," he wrote, "really reserved chilly places. But as you move south, warmth and openness of character develops until finally it is an orgy in the streets of New Orleans."[7]
Soth never reveals to us the orgies that he discovered, although a woman named Adelyn appears on Ash Wednesday to have partied hard all through the hours of the preceding "Fat Tuesday,” more commonly known as Mardi Gras. He does convey the increasing luscious vegetation and heavily scented blooms as well as the final great width of the river as it approaches the Gulf. Against the grandeur of the river, he sets the small lives that are caught between sky and earth. The poet wrote in the introduction to The Americans that Robert Frank "sucked a sad poem right out of America." Alec Soth perceives a sad survival. I am drawn again to John Berryman's "Dream Song I:"
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long
Wonder the world can bear & be.[8]
Soth pries open what he experiences and those whom he met and he wonders (and confirms) that the world can bear & be.
Anne Wilkes Tucker
Curator Emerita
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1. Robert Frank photographed this old preacher praying by the riverbank in 1955, but I didn't see that photograph for another 14 years. It became the first art photograph that I owned.
2. "There is an old man called the Mississippi. That's the old man that I'd like to be. What does he care that the world's got troubles. What does he care if the land ain't free?...0l' Man River he just keeps rollin along." Copyright Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.
3. "Misi” means big and "sipi" means water.
4. Undated letter to Anne Tucker, 2003. Poetry fuels Soth's imagination and lends shape to his ideas. He has read, and reread poets as diverse as Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery, John Berryman and James Wright.
5. Alec Soth's written answers to questions from curator Karen Irvine, unpublished, 2003.
6. Letter to Alec Soth, 2003.
7. Alec Soth’s written answers to questions from curator Karen Irvine, unpublished, 2003.
8. Copyright John Berryman. The Dream Songs, 1969, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc.