SAD CITY, THE BOOK.
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AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. SHIPS LATE NOVEMBER.
AN EDITION OF 200
Best known for, LOWLIFE, images and stories of street prostitutes in Los Angeles, Scot Sothern is inextricably bound to the street. SAD CITY, a new photography series from Mr. Sothern, made while riding shotgun through the streets of Los Angeles, is now available as a limited edition book from STRAYLIGHT PRESS.
The photographs are accompanied by stories, both personal confessions and bare-naked fictions, taken by Sothern from the heart of the images. SAD CITY represents a visually striking world where no one wants to live and the population never stops growing.
Softcover, 7.5 x 10 inches. French stitched, 92 pages, 34 photographs, 26 stories.
Please note: The cover and page spread images here are from a PDF of the book, they are not photos of the actual book. We are just now finalizing the design. Some minor changes will occur between now and when the book hits the press.
Price in US$. Shipping in Canada is $8. Shipping to the USA only US$10 and to the rest of the world only US$15, will be added at the checkout. Taxes will be added at the checkout for all Canadian deliveries.
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"In my early twenties I had a job traveling about making yearbook-style family portrait pictures in churches. I had a blue paper background, a set of four strobe lights and a posing bench where I could build people compositions. I photographed a Viet Nam vet with no arms or legs. He didn’t want his wheelchair to show so I picked him up and put him on the posing bench. I moved in closer than the usual head and shoulders, cropping out everything that wasn’t there. He told me he killed four gooks and he would do it all again. He told me it was God’s will. I told him to look at the lens and look happy and then I made the exposure." ~ Scot Sothern
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"One night when I was fifteen this older guy I knew picked me up at home and drove us to a gas station where we filled two big red cans for about 75 cents. From there we drove out to an abandoned farm house on a rocky road. It was two-story white with a big front porch. We checked all the rooms for people or anything of value then we doused the walls top to bottom. I stood on the front porch and threw two lit matches into a gasoline pool in the center of the living room and then a third before it caught. It went up in an incredible whoosh and singed my eyebrows. It was a kick and sometimes I wish I could do it again." ~ Scot Sothern
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"It’s predawn a hundred years ago and I’m all alone on the street and it’s quiet and I can see tomorrow rolling toward me. I’m looking for a hole to climb into and when I find one there is a girl inside, passed out drunk. She has a half-gone bottle of gin by the neck like she’s trying to strangle the evil out of it. I wrestle it from her grip and take a couple of hits then I work her pants and underpants to her ankles and we make love. She groans a couple of times and I tell her Oh, yeah, baby. I feel that way too." ~ Scot Sothern
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"When you live in a box, you mostly pull yourself around with your forearms. When you pee, you do it horizontally into a plastic gallon milk jug and the front of your pants are usually wet. You're always on the lookout for matches and Bics to momentarily illuminate the fuzzy yellow space and set fire to the rock in the pipe, the one thing you have managed to keep hold of. When the night is spent, you crawl out of your box to meet the day with great apprehension; you stink and your clothes are ragged and your hair is matted; your breath is foul and your sores don't heal, you attract vermin and nobody wants to help you." ~ Scot Sothern
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"I’m five or six years old and playing with the kid next door who likes to undress his sister’s dolls and put fishhooks between their legs. Our houses face a busy two-lane highway, trucks and travelers all day and night. We’re in the front yard playing with matches when I decide to cross the highway we’re not allowed to cross. I look both ways and misjudge distance and speed and some guy has to slam on his brakes as I run out in front of him and across to the other side. It’s a fucking rush so I take off back across to the starting point and tell the kid now it’s his turn. He makes it to the other side but on the way back a car skids to a stop and honks and honks and he freezes in the southbound lane. His mother comes running out from the house and grabs him up and tells me to go home. The thing I still remember about her is that she has a couple of big hairy moles on her neck." ~ Scot Sothern
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"When I was seventeen I had a little gang of friends, street fighters looking for trouble. I watched these guys explode into violence and beat the shit out of any number of losers on any night of the week. I was the worst fighter but the least stupid. One night, drunk as I ever needed to be, I took on a guy, no bigger than I, and I lost badly. Had I not managed to bite into his flesh he would have continued beating my head on the pavement until I was as dumb as he was. My friends watched the fight, start to finish. They laughed uproariously and encouraged me from the sidelines. The next day my head was two sizes larger and my face looked like it had rolled down a mountain. I had taken off my shirt before the first blow and my back was a mass of scabs, which my girlfriend delighted in peeling off for the next two weeks." ~ Scot Sothern
"Drunk at the matinee" is a collection of candid poetry about stupid shit that we all experience from day to day.
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