Running

2011-2014

In the Running series, archetypal figures struggle to escape or arrive—the viewer cannot be sure. Uncertainty, chaos, and vulnerability hover over the universe. These are elemental fears made visible.

Movement provides an opportunity for loss of control as the pictures describe our shared instinct to survive. The figures fight, take flight, stumble, grimace, and lose composure. They are both wounded and heroic.

The fight or flight response in humans is an adaptive behavior to threat. When we are experiencing fight or flight, we temporarily lose our ability to see. This body of work shows us what it looks like when we flee in that state of mind.

The Running photographs are also choreographed documents of individual and cultural paranoia. They are records of the fearful and reactive climate of this global moment. They explore what it means to seize and then act upon visual memories that still touch cultural nerves. They challenge the viewer to move beyond grasping the gist of a scene to contemplate the complexities of the world and the pictures that come out of it.

Shot in 12 states and 3 countries, none of the runners are models. Doing wind sprints turns out to be a good way to lose one’s self-consciousness in front of a camera.

Running was one of the Soren’s earliest explorations of our ability to see clearly. This body of work is where she began her focus on visualizing psychological states. All of Soren’s work is joined together by how these invisible forces can be harnessed into art.