Alec Soth – I know how furiously your heart is beating

Foam Museum in Amsterdam hosts Alec Soth’s most recent project: I know how furiously your heart is beating takes its name from a line in Wallace Stevens’ poem The Gray Room and is the result of a personal search, born after a period of introspection, during which Soth didn’t travel and didn’t photograph, slowing down his work process.

The series marks a departure from Magnum’s photographer’s earlier work: “Rather than trying to make some sort of epic narrative about America” he explained, this time he simply wanted “to spend time in the presence of another beating heart” and to take a glimpse of their interior life. Soth chose to concentrate on individuals from different parts of the world (the “place” was not important) and on their private spaces, taking intense portraits of people in their home or habitat and still-lifes of their personal objects and belongings.