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It’s difficult for me to say anything about Alec Soth’s motel photos. For all the various ways in which Stephen Shore and Jeff Brouws captured the degree to which these humble roadside accommodations ushered in a new way of being in North America, it’s a collection of images taken in Niagara Falls around 2004 that serves as the most eloquent reminder that the romance of post-war optimism has a complicated afterlife.

This whole journey begins with NIAGARA and a peculiar way of looking at a relic of promise that continues to say something about the way that we live right now. The heart-shaped jacuzzis are empty, but a few lights are left on the neon signs, and if you point your camera at the pavement of a parking lot, you might witness the last remains of beauty this place has to offer.

In the wake of past pomp and so much power (literally), Niagara Falls remains a delicate place. The town is guarded in the way that one gets when he/she’s been hurt more than once. Put up a front, but it’s easy to see through you. Camp out at the Cadillac, but you want someone to trudge through the snow to your door.

Maybe that’s Alec Soth. It’s not perfect. It’s no longer romantic, but in a place like Niagara there’s a bit of hope in being seen — and it takes someone who knows what it’s like to be an outsider to get inside a town like this. It takes a few lonely nights between the mirrors at the Candlelight Inn before you pull the cable release on a self-portrait.

The Happiness Inn, Terrace Court, Falls Manner, Seneca, and Fairway Inn — these are sites of so much ignored history. You need strange eyes to see them, more tired than fresh, an almost innate sense for novelty that imposes upon ordinary expectations. Maybe you tape a list of cues to your steering wheel and circle around the city until the sun rises over sleepy tourists shelled out at the casino.

Niagara has always demanded a story, and for decades it had one. New love needs a geography, a site from which it bursts. And you remember everything about it for a long time before it’s eventually engulfed in mist. After that, it’s all photographs. Nothing looks the same, but it endures longer than you might think.

All photos by Alec Soth.

Source: motel-register
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