• Cover of Alec Soth's photography book, Fashion Magazine: Paris, Minnesota. Text along the top long edge reads "FASHION MAGAZINE BY ALEC SOTH." In the center, stacked, "PARIS MINNESOTA."
  • A still from Alec Soth's photography book Fashion Magazine: Paris Minnesota. A young man looks out of the window, his view reflected against the mirror behind which he stands.
  • A photograph of a spread of Alec Soth's Paris Minnesota. Recto: A model in an ice skating uniform and skates stands outside on the icy parking lot, likely somewhere in Minnesota. Verso: The name "KRISTIN" printed in pale color against a white page.
  • Photograph of a spread of Alec Soth's Paris Minnesota. Recto: A female-appearing model sits on an unmade bed, hair and bedspread covering her partially exposed body. Verso: An open doorway.
  • Photograph from Alec Soth's photography book "Paris Minnesota." A couple in formal attire stands in front of an old red Ford truck in a parking lot, a Toyota Tundra ad in the background.
  • A still from Alec Soth's photography book Fashion Magazine: Paris Minnesota. The grand runway, the setting for a Chanel show, stands empty but for producers and stage-hands preparing for the runway. The staggered, theater-like seating sit empty.
  • A still from Alec Soth's photography book Fashion Magazine: Paris Minnesota. From left to right, a woman stands in a white smock; an older woman in a white smock sitting; a cameraperson in a padded 3/4-length coat; her boom mic operator with gear draped around his front.
  • A photograph of a spread of Alec Soth's Paris, Minnesota. Recto: A male model stands against the exterior of a worn white building, in white pants and top, with a blue-sleeved sweater draped over his shoulders. Verso: A panel of the building.
  • A still from Alec Soth's photography book Fashion Magazine: Paris Minnesota. A young man in a full suit sits on a plain brown side chair, askew from the direct sight line. He is seated against a wall made of pine or timber. His expression is blank and nonplussed.
  • A still from Alec Soth's photography book Fashion Magazine: Paris Minnesota. The fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, dressed in a black suit and wearing black sunglasses, sits at the edge of a drawn-back floor length grey curtain, with a short series of staggered bench seating behind him. Extending out of the frame, a photographer aims their camera at Lagerfeld.

Citations, Edition 2: Alec Soth - Fashion Magazine: Paris Minnesota

CITATIONS is a series of short editorials about titles from our photography book collection that inform LW - C’s design process and imagery. The titles described here are sometimes for sale.

Three Observations

The reputation of Alec Soth’s Fashion Magazine: Paris, Minnesota precedes itself. Approached by the influential photography cooperative Magnum Photos after the success of the first two issues by Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden, Alec Soth brings an outsider’s view to the insular world of fashion. Famously, on his first outing for the project, Soth was thrown out of a Dior show. About the work, Soth reflected, “I'm not really comfortable saying I know anything about Paris or its fashion world. And I suspect that most fashionable Parisians know just as little about Minnesota. What is interesting is the space between us.” Luxury perfumes and bags set atop lake rocks; local Minnesotan teenagers clad in Ralph Lauren posed behind aging cars; and portraits of elite models without makeup index this space, inverting and sometimes paralleling each city’s cultural, social, and economic signifiers. Soth trains our attention on the gap even before we see an image: It stares at us in the title, the comma between Paris and Minnesota.

1. As if Paris is a city in Minnesota. The plainness of the title points to a plainness of attitude. This is echoed in what Minnesota should conjure up in the reader: A certain (stereo)typical Midwestern straightforwardness characterized by its absence of pretension. A teenager named Randall poses in a Ralph Lauren suit, his expression apprehensive and vulnerable, yet somehow the clothes fit him. Ralph Lauren’s designs are steeped in a nostalgic celebration of an American dream of Ralph Lauren’s clothing; Randall casts that dream in a mutely humorous pose. If there’s a Paris here, it’s one that is cooperatively imagined between the camera’s gaze and the viewer’s desires.

2. Reading the title another way, Paris isn’t found in Minnesota, but merely stood next to it: Paris. Minnesota. The postures awkward and misplaced. An oversized spread unfurls the empty hall in the precipitant moments of a Chanel show. In another, a designer and her assistant idle behind a camerawoman and her mic operator. Karl Lagerfeld at the end of a pulled-back curtain, posed at the bottom-left corner of a wide stairwell, with the Chanel logo looming large. All are shot in the middle or far distances, re-inscribing the gulf between the photographer and the subject. These are stolen moments, secret and austere. They put the fashion makers and the models, the characters of their designs, in asynchronous rhythms in asymmetrical proportions.

3. The comma hinges, swings between the two imaginaries of Paris and Minnesota. Locals in Somewhere, Minnesota, clad in the Chanel and Dior depicted earlier on professional models, are now laid across plaid bedspread. Young ice skaters stand outdoors in their costumes, the plastic glitter complementary to the cold lake ice.

Indeed, there's a Paris in Minnesota, full of people with grand, beautiful, and outsized lives, surrounded by a majesty unto itself but mistaken for a simple plain; a distant, innocent blankness; or the merely ordinary.

Photography copyright Alec Soth

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