Photos: Photos: Tabitha Soren’s Stark, Ominous “Running” Portrait Show at iMOCA (original) (raw)

The Runaways

For the past two and a half years, photographer Tabitha Soren’s series “Running” has taken her from California to Boston in search of authentic and willing subjects. At the heart of the series, now on exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, is a sense of panic and looming danger, propelled by an ambiguous narrative occurring just outside the frame. Below, VF.com presents an exclusive selection from “Running.”

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Running 002253, 2012

Many of the subjects were complete strangers who came to Soren through mutual acquaintances. Here the high-school friend of the wife of one of her Stanford professor’s runs in Bend, Oregon.

This subject, an opera singer and Soren’s next-door neighbor, was left with her body covered in flesh-colored leeches after the shoot. Having grown up in a commune, the singer said, “Oh yeah, this has happened before,” and casually brushed them off.

This photograph was taken in Livermore, California, where photographer Bill Owens photographed his celebrated “Suburbia” series.

This was shot in Dallas, Texas. The subject, an employee of a friend of her husband’s, braved the rainy conditions. “People are more generous than I have expected all the way through,” says Soren. “It’s definitely a collaboration because they’re doing the running, they’re doing the movement. In her case, the driveway was slanted, and it was slick, and it was wet. And I didn’t want her to fall.”