“Niagara is part of American mythology. It’s a place of romance, where people go to get married,” says Alec Soth. “But when I got there, my view of the place totally changed. The American side is economically devastated. It’s bleak.” Soth’s 2006 project, simply titled Niagara, studies the impact of an economy in disarray and meditates on universal narratives about basic human needs. The large-format images, accompanied in the book by notes and letters, offer an almost uncomfortably intimate view into the lives of Soth’s subjects.
