[2] His work tends to focus on the "off-beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America" according to The Guardian art critic Hannah Booth.

[3] His major publications are Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara, Broken Manual, Songbook, I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating, and A Pound of Pictures.

[2] Curators for the 2004 Whitney Biennial put him in their show, and one of his photographs entitled "Charles", of a man in a flight suit on his roof holding two model airplanes, was used in their poster.

[2] One list was: "beards, birdwatchers, mushroom hunters, men's retreats, after the rain, figures from behind, suitcases, tall people (especially skinny), targets, tents, treehouses and tree lines".

Soth investigates the places in which people retreat to escape civilization, he photographs monks, survivalists, hermits and runaways.

In 2010, Soth flew to the United Kingdom but despite not having applied for a work visa was allowed into the country on the understanding that if he was "caught taking photographs" he could be put in prison for two years.

"Described as a neurological phenomenon, one recurrently associated with creativity, a hypnagogic state is the dreamlike experience while awake that conjures vivid, sometimes realistic imagery," Soth explained in the artist statement for the project.

[8] Following a 2016 assignment on a laughter yoga workshop in India for The New York Times Magazine, Soth stopped working for a year.

[9] During an art residency in San Francisco in 2017, later returned to his practice when the choreographer Anna Halprin, who was 97 at the time, invited him to photograph her at her home.