ERIKA TAL-SHIR | PLAYTIME, DREAMY WORLD AND TREASURES
“I especially portray children, and young girls, because I would like them to experience a throwback in time, in a playful way, that also provides them with a beautiful keepsake. I feel that in our present time, their innocence disappears too fast.
I hope that I can contribute to their self-esteem with my portraits to make them feel beautiful and happy about themselves. Society often puts us in specific roles, in certain expectations, and as a girl who constantly struggled to find my own value and self-respect; today, as a grown-up woman, I try to show them their inner beauty is so visible in their portraits. Doing so makes me happy to know that I can create a beautiful keepsake that will stay for many generations. Occasionally I will add a specific concept to the story, illustrating an idea that adds value to the portrait itself.
The photoshoots take place in my home studio in Raanana, and my favorite way of light is to work with 1 to 2 strobes, double diffused, sometimes with reflectors or V-flats, so I will get really soft light. My background is made from canvas or velvet, but my favorite one is a plain neutral grey paper that gives me endless possibilities to add overlays through photoshop.
Those added elements can be landscapes that I pictured, parts of windows, ceilings or doorframes I shot while traveling in Europe, or even flowers or trees I shot while walking with our dogs.
I also take pictures of my husband’s scrollwork and add it to my creative editing (like a mini coach he made that you can see in one of my photos). Sometimes I also use old paintings in my background that are available for download and creative processing, like the Rijksmuseum Nederland ones. The clothes I use are or self-made, or purchased through sites like Etsy, Amazon or E-bay.
By portraying my subjects the way I do, I make them part of a story, where they find themselves in a world that they only read about in books or see in films. I love to see their reactions when they try on the dresses and the accessories. It feels like playtime, finding a chest filled with treasures and forgetting a while about the present time, to them and me.
Portraying them in the Old Masters style suits the nostalgic views I have about savoring the innocence of a child and keeping the beauty of their souls intact as long as possible. My work has been influenced by the Old Flemish and Dutch Masters and Photography Masters like Sue Bryce, Richard Wood, Paulina Duczman, Gemmy Woud-Binnendijck, Bernadette Boon, and Chris Knight.
Erika Tal-Shir
I am a Fine Art and Portrait photographer, and co-founder of Beam Collective. I was born and raised in Antwerp, Belgium, and live today in Raanana, Israel, with my family and my two dogs. I studied photography in Studio Gavra, Tel Aviv, and continued afterward to study with many internationally renowned photographers like Tracy Willis, Sue Bryce, Pauline Duczman, and others. I am working towards reaching Associated Level in the Portrait Masters. I always have been a creative soul. I believe that my music background has been of influence in my photography of today, where I was especially interested in the early 19th century’s romantic period. Being a romantic soul, this was the beginning of my fascination with the whole historical era and never stopped reading or fantasizing about it.
Growing up in Belgium, namely Antwerp, gave me plenty of occasions to visit museums, parks with castles, that again provided me with the perfect information and background for my favorite period. Only to walk through the streets of Antwerp, you feel that history surrounds you.
It was as I was nearing my fifties that I picked up a camera. It was as if I got reacquainted with an old friend of mine. Growing up with a father whose hobby was photography, I always had been with a camera of my own, but I never took the time to really learn how to work with film. And when thirty to forty years later, I got introduced into the digital area, a whole new world filled with possibilities opened up to me. I found the perfect medium to create my own vision within my world of imagination, often rising from the need to keep innocence, faith, and beauty alive and explore those same aspects.
