An Exclusive Interview With Erika Tal-Shir

Erika Tal-Shir A Fantasy World

Erika Tal-Shir (born 1966 Antwerp, Belgium) is a portrait and fine art photographer who works and lives with her family in Ra’anana, Israel. She tries to apply poetic and often metaphorical language in her work. By doing so, Tal-Shir seduces the viewer into a world of fantasy, transgressing into historical periods but tinted with the awareness of present times. The portraits are captured, not solely to depict her subject, but to add a plus value to the whole scene, often by transference to the photographer’s identity or her inner world, upon the subject, and by doing so, she creates a piece of art that is more than just a mere portrait.

It is as if she creates a way that will lead the viewer into the essence of the artist herself, a secret passage that will lead to the understanding of a hidden world only approachable by those who know the secret language of creation and imagination.

Her work feels inspired by the nineteenth-century tradition of works, in which an ideal of “fulfilled absence “was seen as the pinnacle.

Tal-Shir’s portraits appears as images where fiction and reality meet,