Joel Sternfeld in Praise of Alec Soth

I have rarely encountered a student who went about learning with such intensity and such integrity. Every Saturday for four years Alec would go to New York and visit every art exhibition of interest. It was like a military campaign.

For about a year and a half Alec struggled, trying all sorts of things - each was a failure, some pretty interesting, some pretty awful. He was working with such integrity - he didn't want to copy what other people had done, he didn't want to go over the same territory. And then in the middle of his last year at college he got mad at me, mad at himself, mad with photography - and suddenly everything fell into place and he began to produce absolutely first-rate work.

There's an old saying amongst art teachers - 'when the great student comes along you merely hold their coat' - and that's what I did for Alec.

Alec has done something that has changed the course of the medium that will be followed.