Табита Сорен

Running

source: brblurb

RUNNING is about our shared instinct to survive. Archetypal figures struggle to escape or arrive – the viewer cannot be sure. Elemental fears like uncertainty, chaos and vulnerability are made visible. Movement provides an opportunity for loss of control, un-self-consciousness. The figures stumble, grimace and lose composure. They are both wounded and heroic.
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source: berkeleyside

Tabitha Soren was driving down Sacramento Street near Stanford Avenue when she spotted a change in a huge tree jutting up in the air.

For months Soren, a Berkeley photographer and former news correspondent for MTV and NBC, had been eyeing the tree. At 60 feet high, with a bifurcated trunk completely covered with leaves and vines, the tree was an arresting sight in the gritty Oakland neighborhood. Soren had long been intrigued by its sculptural qualities, but the tree had always been inaccessible behind a chain link fence.

But on that day, the chain link fence was gone. Soren leaped into action. She got on her cell phone and started calling around to find someone, anyone, who could rush down and be in a picture. Within a half-hour, Soren had found a carpool buddy to pose for her. When he lined up near the tree, dressed in khaki slacks and a brown coat, Soren told him to run. And run again. And run again.

The result is a striking picture of a man falling in front of a tree that completely dwarfs him. It’s not clear how he got there or what he is doing, but a close observer can see him about to land on the ground, his right hand splayed in an awkward position.

The photograph became part of a series named Running, featuring people running through foggy forests, on freeway ramps, on railroad tracks, out of lakes, and in fields. The subjects are in the middle of something, either arriving or leaving, in distress or not. “What I like about them is the way each subject has a story we want to know about,” said Alice Ranahan, an Oakland art consultant. “Why are they running? What are they running from or to? They are like staged film stills, but we don’t have the benefit of seeing the whole film. In this way there is tremendous mystery surrounding each image. Each subject has heightened emotions that lead us to want to know more about what they have experienced.”

Soren’s Running series is currently on display through June 1 in a solo show at the Kopeiken Gallery in Los Angeles. Some photographs from the series can also be seen May 16-19 at ArtMRKT, an international art fair held at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

The Running series marks a turning point in Soren’s photographic career.
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source: flakphoto

Tabitha Soren was born into a military family and grew up all over the world. Snapshots were one of the few ways she had to remember the details that made up her life in the last town or base — so she took them incessantly and spent many afternoons cataloguing them. She headed to New York for college where she received a BA in Journalism and Politics at New York University. After a career in television news shooting 30 frames a second, Soren decided she wanted to concentrate on one frame at a time and spent a year studying photography at Stanford University. Over the past ten years, her projects have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Canteen, Vanity Fair and New York, among others. Soren’s work speaks to the twists of fate in life that can unhinge us. Her pictures address what havoc human beings can survive — and what they can’t. Public collections include the Oakland Museum of Art, in California, the New Orleans Museum of Art as well as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, both in Louisiana. Her Running series debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Indianapolis this summer but is currently on display through June 1 in a solo show at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.