5/15/2026
We made it to the weekend! Another week has passed, this one a little more difficult than the last few but that is alright. This week was pretty uneventful but in turn that leads to having more time to ruminate on anxieties and perceived shortfalls. I lost patience with myself a few separate times this week but I recognize that this was due to anxiety and stress and doesn’t make my thoughts equal my reality. I don’t want to sit on these thoughts so journaling and adhering to a schedule has been good for me this week, and furthermore….note-taking. So without further ado, here are some thoughts on Tim Soter’s SVA i3 Lecture!
Tim Soter is undoubtedly an amazing photographer, taking inspiration from some of the most prominent and important portrait photographers of all time (Richard Avedon, Duane Michals, Arthur Tress), combining elements of their styles and cultivating his own, eventually leading to some of the most iconic band photos and album covers of all time. But what grasped me most about his lecture was the approach he takes when creating photobooks. One of the biggest stresses of the talk is ‘criteria.’ How is it useful, what does this look like in his projects, and when it should be used? Soter holds criteria as possibly the single most important aspect to any project. It is ‘criteria’ that forces us to think deeply about what does and does not belong, channeling a broad world into a successful project. Soter uses this specificity so masterfully, showing that the pretentious idea of a photobook having to just “come from the heart” is archaic. The emotion and origin of a project can be very personal, but without a certain amount of strictness in editing, gaps start to appear and the conveyance of the idea to the viewer can be lost.
In his two books “Tim, Go Away” and “ForTress” the criteria is more obvious with both projects being dedicated to individual artists that Tim looks up to, and the subsequent relationships he built with those photographers. “Tim, Go Away” is all about Duane Michals or rather Tim Soter’s obsession with Duane, going as far as to track down his apartment by looking at the call button in the back of an old interview Duane gave. This then flourished into an amazing relationship, with Tim documenting every little detail of Duane from a crease he accidentally made in a print, to macro photographs of the nuances in Duane’s signature. Similarly, “ForTress” is a book about Arthur Tress, starting with the photowalks he and Soter used to embark on after surprisingly meeting. With Tress’s openness to experimentation Soter began to use collage, screenshots, private messages, and archival works to relay the story of their friendship through an intense variety of visual art. I am of the opinion that if Soter tried to add too much to these works, unnecessary backstory or random establishing photos, the projects would not be nearly as successful as they are. Soter is so amazing at giving himself a story to tell, and either shooting, arranging, or editing photographs in a way that tells that story and nothing more. There is no wasted movement!
Those are just some of the notes I have about the Tim Soter lecture. I absolutely LOVED this talk and as always it will be linked below for you to check out. If you are at all into the creation of books or the process of parsing a project down to its best bits, I highly suggest you check it out. I am going to the Ravenswood garage sale on Sunday which I am super excited for, and with summer hours coming up I will be shooting a lot more. I hope y’all have the best weekend ever, I love y’all, drink your water, get your steps in, protect your friends, protect your family, protect your neighbors. I love y’all
SOURCES:
School of Visual Arts. Soter, T. [SVA] (2025, June 3rd). Tim Soter - Photographer and Book Publisher [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=219u7dCHJ04&t=4624s
Reconstruction of the Corner Store by My Place (Garfield Park)
