Tabitha Soren

justlivehere.com/why-i-write/, 2017From the series ‘Surface Tension’

Tabitha Soren Biography 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 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; Dorsky Gallery, New York, NY; Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; 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 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; The New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; the Oakland Museum of California; The George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, CA; Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA; and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Her images have been featured in Hyperallergic, the Washington Post, California Sunday Magazine, ArtNews, Newsweek, and the Guardian, and publications include Fantasy Life (Aperture), Trace (Yoffy Press) and Surface Tension (RVB Books). She currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.