After completing the work for his first book, Sleeping by the Mississippi, in 2002, Alec Soth traveled with his wife to Bogota, Colombia, to adopt a baby girl.

"My wife and I adopted our baby girl, Carmen Laura, from Bogota, Colombia. While the courts processed her paperwork, we spent two months in Bogota waiting to take Carmen home.

Carmen's birthmother gave her a book filled with letters, pictures and poems. "I hope that the hardness of the world will not hurt your sensitivity," she wrote, "When I think about you I hope that your life is full of beautiful things."

With those words as a mission...