Guy Tal | Photographer, Author
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It’s always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don’t make changes, don’t risk disapproval, don’t upset your syndics. It’s always easiest to let yourself be governed. There’s a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your... Continue Reading →
Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought. ~Bertrand Russell I’m delighted to see various “influencers” promoting the idea of not revealing location information. Recently, even a local tourism board (in Jackson Hole, WY)... Continue Reading →
What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places? ~Mary Oliver It may be that the last couple of years have been the most difficult in my life. I may elaborate on the reasons in a future post, but I will say now that my recent... Continue Reading →
There are no moments. Moments exist in theory alone. To live, to feel, to experience, to think, is to be in a constant state of becoming. It is the dialectic nature of living, and why experiences cannot be contained in moments any more than a movie can be contained in a single frame.
Whether a photograph is art is less important than whether the photographer is an artist.
Searching for a respite from grief, I backpacked through the wilderness and scrambled up the peaks with a near-desperate vigor. Long, hard hikes temporarily soothed my pain and helped me to fall into exhausted sleep at night. At some deep level, the beauty of my surroundings seeped into my subconscious—the lush colors of a meadow dense... Continue Reading →
Introducing his book, Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey wrote, “most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You’re holding a tombstone in your hands.” Without intending it, I realized a few years ago that the same has become true of many of my photographs.
To those who wish to become more serious—about photography or anything else—but struggle to find the first, or next, step, I offer this advice: seek out places, activities, and people you feel are worth caring about; and among these find those things or persons who can challenge you, and let them.
I believe that such an implicit contract in photography exists (or should exist) only in some contexts, and that there is no such contract that applies unequivocally to all photographs, and certainly not to all art.
There are moments, and it is only a matter of a few seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony ... A terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you ... During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and... Continue Reading →