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Alec Soth: So about 10 years ago,
I got a call from a woman in Texas,

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Stacey Baker,

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and she'd seen some of my photographs
in an art exhibition

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and was wondering if she could commission
me to take a portrait of her parents.

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Now, at the time I hadn't met Stacey,
and I thought this was some sort of

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wealthy oil tycoon and I'd struck it rich,

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but it was only later that I found out

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she'd actually taken out a loan
to make this happen.

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I took the picture of her parents,

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but I was actually more excited
about photographing Stacey.

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The picture I made that day

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ended up becoming
one of my best-known portraits.

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At the time I made this picture,
Stacey was working as an attorney

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for the State of Texas.

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Not long after, she left her job
to study photography in Maine,

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and while she was there,
she ended up meeting

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the director of photography
at the New York Times Magazine

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and was actually offered a job.

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Stacey Baker: In the years since,
Alec and I have done

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a number of magazine projects together,

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and we've become friends.

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A few months ago, I started talking
to Alec about a fascination of mine.

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I've always been obsessed
with how couples meet.

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I asked Alec how he
and his wife Rachel met,

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and he told me the story
of a high school football game

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where she was 16 and he was 15,

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and he asked her out.

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He liked her purple hair.

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She said yes, and that was it.

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I then asked Alec if he'd be interested
in doing a photography project

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exploring this question.

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AS: And I was interested in the question,
but I was actually much more interested

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in Stacey's motivation for asking it,

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particularly since I'd never known
Stacey to have a boyfriend.

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So as part of this project,
I thought it'd be interesting

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if she tried to meet someone.

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So my idea was to have Stacey here
go speed dating

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in Las Vegas on Valentine's Day.

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(Laughter) (Applause) (Music)

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SB: We ended up at what was advertised
as the world's largest speed dating event.

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I had 19 dates

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and each date lasted three minutes.

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Participants were given a list of ice-
breaker questions to get the ball rolling,

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things like, "If you could be any kind
of animal, what would you be?"

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That sort of thing.

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My first date was Colin.

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He's from England,

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and he once married a woman he met
after placing an ad for a Capricorn.

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Alec and I saw him
at the end of the evening,

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and he said he'd kissed a woman in line
at one of the concession stands.

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Zack and Chris came
to the date-a-thon together.

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This is Carl.

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I asked Carl, "What's the first thing
you notice about a woman?"

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He said, "Tits."

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(Laughter)

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Matthew is attracted to women
with muscular calves.

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We talked about running. He does
triathlons, I run half-marathons.

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Alec actually liked his eyes and asked
if I was attracted to him, but I wasn't,

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and I don't think he was
attracted to me either.

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Austin and Mike came together.

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Mike asked me a hypothetical question.

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He said, "You're in an elevator
running late for a meeting.

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Someone makes a dash for the elevator.

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Do you hold it open for them?"

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And I said I would not.

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(Laughter)

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Cliff said the first thing he notices
about a woman is her teeth,

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and we complimented each other's teeth.

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Because he's an open mouth sleeper,

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he says he has to floss more
to help prevent gum disease,

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and so I asked him how often he flosses,

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and he said, "Every other day."

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(Laughter)

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Now, as someone who flosses twice a day,

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I wasn't really sure that
that was flossing more

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but I don't think I said that out loud.

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Bill is an auditor,

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and we talked the entire three minutes
about auditing. (Laughter)

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The first thing Spencer notices
about a woman is her complexion.

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He feels a lot of women
wear too much makeup,

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and that they should only wear enough
to accentuate the features that they have.

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I told him I didn't wear any makeup at all

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and he seemed to think
that that was a good thing.

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Craig told me he didn't think
I was willing to be vulnerable.

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He was also frustrated when I couldn't
remember my most embarrassing moment.

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He thought I was lying, but I wasn't.

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I didn't think he liked me at all,
but at the end of the night,

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he came back to me and he gave me
a box of chocolates.

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William was really difficult to talk to.

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I think he was drunk.

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(Laughter)

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Actor Chris McKenna
was the MC of the event.

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He used to be on
"The Young and the Restless."

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I didn't actually go on a date with him.

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Alec said he saw several women
give their phone numbers to him.

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Needless to say, I didn't fall in love.

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I didn't feel a particular connection with
any of the men that I went on dates with,

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and I didn't feel like they felt
a particular connection with me either.

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AS: Now, the most beautiful thing to me --

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(Laughter) -- as a photographer
is the quality of vulnerability.

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The physical exterior reveals a crack
in which you can get a glimpse

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at a more fragile interior.

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At this date-a-thon event,
I saw so many examples of that,

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but as I watched Stacey's dates
and talked to her about them,

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I realized how different
photographic love is from real love.

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What is real love? How does it work?

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In order to work on this question
and to figure out how someone goes

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from meeting on a date
to having a life together,

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Stacey and I went to Sun City Summerlin,

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which is the largest
retirement community in Las Vegas.

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Our contact there was George,
who runs the community's photography club.

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He arranged for us to meet other couples
in their makeshift photo studio.

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SB: After 45 years of marriage,
Anastasia's husband died two years ago,

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so we asked if she had
an old wedding picture.

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She met her husband
when she was a 15-year-old waitress

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at a small barbecue place in Michigan.

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He was 30.

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She'd lied about her age.

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He was the first person she'd dated.

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Dean had been named photographer of
the year in Las Vegas two years in a row,

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and this caught Alec's attention,

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as did the fact 
that he met his wife, Judy,

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at the same age when Alec met Rachel.

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Dean admitted that he likes
to look at beautiful women,

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but he's never questioned
his decision to marry Judy.

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AS: George met Josephine
at a parish dance.

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He was 18, she was 15.

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Like a lot of the couples we met,
they weren't especially philosophical

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about their early choices.

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George said something
that really stuck with me.

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He said, "When you get that feeling,
you just go with it."

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Bob and Trudy met on a blind date
when she was still in high school.

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They said they weren't particularly
attracted to each other

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when the first met.

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Nevertheless, they were
married soon after.

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SB: The story that stayed with me the most

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was that of George, the photography club
president, and his wife, Mary.

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This was George and Mary's
second marriage.

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They met at a country-western club
in Louisville, Kentucky called the Sahara.

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He was there alone drinking
and she was with friends.

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When they started dating,
he owed the IRS 9,000 dollars in taxes,

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and she offered to help him
get out of debt,

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so for the next year, he turned
his paychecks over to Mary,

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and she got him out of debt.

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George was actually an alcoholic
when they married, and Mary knew it.

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At some point in their marriage,
he says he consumed

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54 beers in one day.

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Another time, when he was drunk,
he threatened to kill Mary

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and her two kids,

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but they escaped and a SWAT team
was called to the house.

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Amazingly, Mary took him back,

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and eventually things got better.

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George has been involved
in Alcoholics Anonymous

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and hasn't had a drink in 36 years.

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(Music)

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At the end of the day,
after we left Sun City,

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I told Alec that I didn't actually think

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that the stories of how these couples met
were all that interesting.

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What was more interesting

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was how they managed to stay together.

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AS: They all had this beautiful
quality of endurance,

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but that was true of the singles, too.

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The world is hard,
and the singles were out there

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trying to connect with other people,

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and the couples
were holding onto each other

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after all these decades.

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My favorite pictures on this trip
were of Joe and Roseanne.

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Now, by the time we met Joe and Roseanne,

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we'd gotten in the habit of asking couples
if they had an old wedding photograph.

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In their case, they simultaneously
pulled out of their wallets

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the exact same photograph.

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What's more beautiful,
I thought to myself,

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this image of a young couple
who has just fallen in love

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or the idea of these two people
holding onto this image for decades?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)