It's easy for a Minnesotan to take photographer Alec Soth for granted. This year his work has appeared everywhere, including on City Pages' Artist of the Year cover, in the publication of From Here to There: Alec Soth's America, and on a Flickr project in which locals were invited to contribute pics as well. But we're very fortunate to have him. Last fall's show at the Walker featured hundreds of images from his prolific career and was his first U.S. survey. His photography is often deceptively simple—one may argue banal—but his images of folks doing mundane things are powerful. They tell a greater story and capture the quiet, truthful moments of life in the Midwest and beyond. "From Here to There" featured beautiful large-scale images from past shows "Niagara" and "Sleeping by the Mississippi," as well as "Broken Manual," a new series featuring images of people who live on the fringe.