Focusing primarily on work from the past four years, this exhibition was something of a homecoming for Alec Soth, who worked in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’s photographic services department for eight years. It comprised a far wider scope of subjects than those in “Sleeping by the Mississippi,” the 1999–2003 series that brought him international attention, yet the show was permeated by the same romantic sensibility, a sort of everyday dreaminess. At their best, Soth’s portraits capture a melancholic reality infused with a sense of the subjects’ aspirations, longings, and passions—no matter