"Tell me a Story" and other discussions at the Soth Flickr Project

With less than one week to go, Alec Soth’s “From Here to There” project continues to gain momentum. As the September 27 deadline quickly approaches, participants continue to explore the world using a list of 10 things to gain new insight on their surroundings. These findings are sparking exciting intellectual and sometimes philosophical conversations regarding life, photography and the art world at-large.

Cynthia Wood (Cynner_SF) wrote some engaging thoughts relating to her Sunday afternoon discovery of the BOC (photo, “Neighbood Bar [Closed]” above).

The name of the bar is BOC, which apparently stands for Bar On Church — as in Church Street. It used to be called The Transfer, for a long time, and I didn’t even realize the name had been changed to BOC until right after I took this shot. And I didn’t realize what BOC meant or stood for until I got home and looked it up on the interwebs; otherwise, my first thought was Blue Oyster Cult — not that I could name or hum a B.O.C. song right now if my life depended on it! It’s weird, or interesting how certain things lodge in our consciousness and memory even though we have no real meaningful connection to them. It was a Sunday afternoon and the bar was closed when I took this shot through the window. For some reason I’ve felt like I needed or wanted to tell stories –or at least say something— about the photos I’ve been taking for this ‘assignment.’ I’m not sure why, because more often than not I don’t say much (if anything!) about my own photographs.

Aaron Shapiro (air_uhh_n) comments on his process of photographing the “day in the life” story of supermarket cashiers 

I approached this assignment focusing on the Supermarket Cashiers since well… I am one. I began taking my camera to work, and sometimes blatantly and sometimes clandestinely photographing my coworkers as well as my surroundings. 

 

   

 

   

 

   

Shapiro comments on his process, I was hoping to build a day-in-the-life documentation of what we do each day, an internal exploration, if you will.  

  

  

Shapiro continues by stating, “Ultimately what this [project] did for me was exactly what you described, it got me out beating the bushes looking, thinking, and photographing. What I really appreciated about Mr. Soth’s call was simply that it got me working again. For that, I am really grateful.” 

Finally wrap-up this week’s “From here to there” update and keep those photo coming, submissions of “Sleeping Children”