It’s been a week since Alec Soth announced the “From Here to There” Flickr project, devised in conjunction with his exhibition that opens here on Saturday. Already more than 450 photographers have joined the group, uploading nearly 500 images – and the deadline isn’t until October 1.
The “Treasure Hunt” theme for this first “From Here to There” assignment (yes, another is coming up) takes off on Soth’s own artistic process, and has participants photographing a list of specific things, including pilots, amateur paintings, sleeping children, sheep, and suitcases.
Chieftain Studio submitted a pair of photos, but also wrote of the “list of stuff” technique: “I’m finding this approach a bit forced (i.e., I’m shooting things because they’re on the list, not because they scream “great shot”).” He asked Soth if that technique yields “a lot of so-so shots, then you edit out the losers?”
Soth responded by pointing to comments from another participant, whom he felt had hit on the spirit of the project. Hannah/gofeetgo declared, “I’m going to use the assignment as my own personal kick in the pants.” She promptly went out and had a memorable encounter in an “old, eccentric Taiwanese folk shop” in a small town. It was the first place she had noticed when arriving, and now that she’s leaving Taiwan shortly, she finally paid a visit. “It makes me excited about your listing process,” she wrote. “I’m going to spend our last week here trying to keep this list in mind and I look forward to the serendipity it may provoke.”
There’s a lively conversation developing around this project at Flickr; we’ll be posting more select images and commentary in the coming weeks; or you can go dive into the whole thing yourself.
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