During her eight years with MTV News, Tabitha Soren brought journalistic gravitas to a network that focused on celebrity and drama. Her interview with Tupac Shakur still stands as one of his most insightful, and her coverage of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign earned MTV News a Peabody Award.
After leaving MTV in 1998, Soren moved to the Bay Area with her husband, the author Michael Lewis. While he worked on books like The New New Thing, Soren attended Stanford on a fellowship, spending most of her time in the fine arts department. She decided she wanted to become a photographer — pursuing art with her camera instead of news, Soren said, allowed her to be more honest.
“It’s coming from my heart instead of my head. Journalism was about searching for an objective truth, and my artwork is searching for an emotional truth,” Soren said.
In 2003, Soren attended the Oakland Athletics’ Spring Training camp while her husband researched the team for his book Moneyball. Though she wasn’t a fan of baseball at the time, seeing the team’s new recruits inspired her to start a massive project.
“I met a draft class who was arriving at Spring Training for the very first time,” Soren said. “And I saw all these kids with their faces full of hope, all going to work towards playing on a major league team, and I thought, ‘Wow, wouldn’t this be great to shoot their picture every year and see how their faces change, because they can’t remain this hopeful.'”