A friend just introduced me to Sufjan Steven’s music and I have to say, I’m in love. I’ve never wanted to learn the banjo more than after listening to The Dress Looks Nice On You. Steven’s lyrics elevate the mundane to something meaningful, and he includes references to his own life in very intimate, real ways. I couldn’t help but make the connection between Alec Soth’s culturally sensitive and probing photography with Stevens’ honest and eclectic music. Check out the deeply personal and semi-autobiographical Casimir Pulaski Day (and for those that prefer their music to have a stronger melodic line: Chicago)

One of the most striking similarities between Sufjan Stevens and Alec Soth is that both chose specific middle-American mundane subcultures as the subject of their work. Alec Soth’s photographed his series, Sleeping By the Mississippi, during road trips he took along the Mississippi. The work records “…the eccentricity, unexpected beauty, profound mystery, and sadness of the people and places he discovers along the way.” The culture Soth explored is often overlooked but Soth draws back the curtain to show the intimacies and subtleties that are universally experienced. Similarly, Sufjan Stevens’ songs have raw, unsweetened lyrics that reveal the details of his own life in a way that the listener can relate to. Stevens himself belongs to a Midwestern culture, and he is fascinated by the culture of his home state, Michigan. He has embarked on a mission to make an album for every state in America and has just finished the latest album in the series, Illinois. Just as Soth photographed the mundane to draw attention to its humanity, Stevens sings about the details of every-day occurrences because they are significant to him. It is the respectful and deeply curious attitude that defines both artists and causes their work to be successful. Both explore the mundane to tease out the profound.

In addition to content, Sufjan Stevens and Alec Soth treat their work’s musicality/aesthetics similarly. Both Stevens and Soth resist the urge to make the biggest sound or the brightest photograph; instead, both maintain an understated, quiet quality that asks the viewer/listener to pay attention. The lyrics and the photographs are themselves vague and ask to be defined and understood by the audience. Another interesting similarity is that Soth makes all kinds of photographs in his series (ranging from composed portraits to landscapes to found ephemera) and Stevens plays all kinds of instruments in his recording. Both artists refuse to be locked into a genre and instead incorporate the necessary elements to say the story most effectively. Neither of these artists care for glamour but rather dignified realism.

If they met at a party, I’m pretty sure they’d have a lot to talk about.