Tabitha Soren explores the expansive power of photography by pushing its material limits and embracing its unreliable nature. She probes the surface of the photograph to unlock the rich history of the medium and experiments with sculptural and painterly interventions to further complicate the inherent uncertainty of the source. This layered approach underscores not only the bounds of the viewer’s perception but also makes visible the psychological states of Soren’s subject matter, creating a tension between what is seen and what lies underneath.
A visual artist in different domains for over twenty-five years, Soren has long explored the intersection of psychology, culture, politics, and the body. Her mediated images examine the vulnerabilities we all carry and provide the outline for a narrative still endlessly unfolding. Whether capturing solitary individuals running through empty streets, harnessing the sublime power of the natural world, or obscuring violent scenes with a dense application of ink and resin, Soren calls forth the underlying and pervasive energy that propels a twist of fate, upends a story, and challenges a belief. She never lets the viewer forget that there is something looming just outside of the frame- maybe a threat, a dashed hope, an unfair assumption, or an impending change in fortune- that deserves respect and consideration.
Though a palpable sense of pathos connects all her images, Soren begins each new series using the methodical investigative tools she used during her time in journalism. Books, research studies, and statistics lay a necessary analytical foundation for the visual ideas she communicates. These data points then merge with her experiences growing up in a military family, spending her youth moving around the world and adjusting to the cultural differences, social structures, and visual cues that came with each relocation. This constant navigation of environments hinged on threat and survival led to a true understanding of what it means to always live on high alert, giving Soren a level of empathy for internal struggle and a sincere desire to show the myriad ways we reveal ourselves as we move through the world.
Soren was born in 1967 in San Antonio, Texas and lived in 7 U.S. states, Germany and the Philippines during her formative and adolescent years. She received her degree in 1989 from New York University and was awarded a fellowship from Stanford University in 1997. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; Transformer Station, Cleveland, OH; The Davis Museum, Wellesley, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, IN; Oakland Museum of California, and others. Select group exhibitions include SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA. , Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AK, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA; The Worcester Art Museum, MA; Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Aperture Gallery, New York, NY; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; The Photographer’s Gallery, London, UK; the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; and the Ogden Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA.
Soren’s work is in many private and public collections including the National Gallery in Washington DC, the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the DeYoung Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Art, Museum of Fine Art Houston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museums, the Oakland Museum of California, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the George Eastman Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Her work has been written about in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, ArtNews, The Boston Globe, British Journal of Photography, Newsweek, and the Guardian among others. Books include Fantasy Life (Aperture), Trace (Yoffy Press) and Surface Tension (RVB Books). She currently lives and works in Berkeley, California.
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