Guy Tal | Photographer, Author
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Art is too complex and diverse to be explicable in terms of a single category such as the aesthetic. ‘Artistic value’ is constituted by a set of different kinds of value. The modes of appreciating art, the means to understanding art, the kinds of objects that are artworks are also all plural. —Robert Stecker There... Continue Reading →
How can you expect a beholder to experience my picture as I experienced it? A picture comes to me a long time beforehand; who knows how long a time beforehand, I sensed, saw, and painted it and yet the next day even I do not understand what I have done. How can anyone penetrate my... Continue Reading →
My new book, Be Extraordinary: Philosophical Advice for Photographic and Other Artists is now available for purchase and immediate download. (Note that you may also purchase the book from ebook sellers, such as Amazon, Google, or Apple Books. However, if you purchase the ebook directly from my website, you will receive both an EPUB version... Continue Reading →
Note: My upcoming book, Be Extraordinary, is now available to pre-order! Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language. —Aldo Leopold Art and nature have this in common: they affect some people more profoundly... Continue Reading →
But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality. —Albert Camus Note: This article contains passages borrowed from various sections of the manuscript-in-progress for... Continue Reading →
Whether it be a painting or photograph, the picture is a symbol that brings one immediately into close touch with reality. . . . In fact, it is often more effective than the reality would have been, because, in the picture, the non-essential and conflicting interests have been eliminated. —Lewis Hine Ask most photographers about... Continue Reading →
To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future. —Bertrand Russell Based on some readers’ responses to... Continue Reading →
The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded; it is false. —Albert Camus In recent weeks, I was asked by two different people for advice on how to become a professional landscape photographer. One was an ambitious and precocious young teenager who, at age 13, had already decided that this... Continue Reading →
The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different, but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are... Continue Reading →
This article brought to you—in full and free of advertising—by the generosity of my Patreon supporters. Please consider becoming one. Away with ideals. Let each individual act spontaneously from the forever incalculable prompting of the creative wellhead within him. There is no universal law. —D.H. Lawrence Working in projects is, without a doubt, a better, more artistic,... Continue Reading →