This is what enduring love looks like

Stacey Baker has always been obsessed with how couples meet. When she asked photographer Alec Soth to help her explore this topic, they found themselves at the world’s largest speed-dating event, held in Las Vegas on Valentine’s Day, and at the largest retirement community in Nevada — with Soth taking portraits of pairs in each locale. Between these two extremes, they unwound a beautiful through-line of how a couple goes from meeting to creating a life together. (This talk was part of a TED2015 session curated by Pop-Up Magazine: popupmagazine.com or @popupmag on Twitter.)

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

Stacey Baker,

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

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

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

wealthy oil tycoon and I'd struck it rich,

but it was only later that I found out

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

I took the picture of her parents,

but I was actually more excited
about photographing Stacey.

The picture I made that day

ended up becoming
one of my best-known portraits.

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

for the State of Texas.

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

and while she was there,
she ended up meeting

the director of photography
at the New York Times Magazine

and was actually offered a job.

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

a number of magazine projects together,

and we've become friends.

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

I've always been obsessed
with how couples meet.

I asked Alec how he
and his wife Rachel met,

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

where she was 16 and he was 15,

and he asked her out.

He liked her purple hair.

She said yes, and that was it.

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

exploring this question.

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

in Stacey's motivation for asking it,

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

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

if she tried to meet someone.

So my idea was to have Stacey here
go speed dating

in Las Vegas on Valentine's Day.

(Laughter) (Applause) (Music)

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

I had 19 dates

and each date lasted three minutes.

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

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

That sort of thing.

My first date was Colin.

He's from England,

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

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

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

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

This is Carl.

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

He said, "Tits."

(Laughter)

Matthew is attracted to women
with muscular calves.

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

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

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

Austin and Mike came together.

Mike asked me a hypothetical question.

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

Someone makes a dash for the elevator.

Do you hold it open for them?"

And I said I would not.

(Laughter)

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

and we complimented each other's teeth.

Because he's an open mouth sleeper,

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

and so I asked him how often he flosses,

and he said, "Every other day."

(Laughter)

Now, as someone who flosses twice a day,

I wasn't really sure that
that was flossing more

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

Bill is an auditor,

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

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

He feels a lot of women
wear too much makeup,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William was really difficult to talk to.

I think he was drunk.

(Laughter)

Actor Chris McKenna
was the MC of the event.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

at a more fragile interior.

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

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

I realized how different
photographic love is from real love.

What is real love? How does it work?

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

from meeting on a date
to having a life together,

Stacey and I went to Sun City Summerlin,

which is the largest
retirement community in Las Vegas.

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

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

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

so we asked if she had
an old wedding picture.

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

at a small barbecue place in Michigan.

He was 30.

She'd lied about her age.

He was the first person she'd dated.

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

and this caught Alec's attention,

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

at the same age when Alec met Rachel.

Dean admitted that he likes
to look at beautiful women,

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

AS: George met Josephine
at a parish dance.

He was 18, she was 15.

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

about their early choices.

George said something
that really stuck with me.

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

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

They said they weren't particularly
attracted to each other

when the first met.

Nevertheless, they were
married soon after.

SB: The story that stayed with me the most

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

This was George and Mary's
second marriage.

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

He was there alone drinking
and she was with friends.

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

and she offered to help him
get out of debt,

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

and she got him out of debt.

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

At some point in their marriage,
he says he consumed

54 beers in one day.

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

and her two kids,

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

Amazingly, Mary took him back,

and eventually things got better.

George has been involved
in Alcoholics Anonymous

and hasn't had a drink in 36 years.

(Music)

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

I told Alec that I didn't actually think

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

What was more interesting

was how they managed to stay together.

AS: They all had this beautiful
quality of endurance,

but that was true of the singles, too.

The world is hard,
and the singles were out there

trying to connect with other people,

and the couples
were holding onto each other

after all these decades.

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

Now, by the time we met Joe and Roseanne,

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

In their case, they simultaneously
pulled out of their wallets

the exact same photograph.

What's more beautiful,
I thought to myself,

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

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

Thank you.

(Applause)