Shmuel Thaler
For over thirty years, Santa Cruz County residents have opened up their copy of the Santa Cruz Sentinel each morning and seen their lives reflected in Shmuel Thaler’s photographs. From triathlons to earthquakes, from clam chowder cook-offs to murder trials, from burning brush to breaching humpback whales—Thaler’s images record the dynamic nature of this unique Central California coastal community that we call home. His photographs fuse a recognizable artistic, graphical aesthetic with a driving documentary impulse. This oral history photobook based on interviews conducted by the Regional History Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz Library captures the trajectory and philosophy of Shmuel Thaler’s photographic career.
Date of Interview
Interviewer
2018-02-26
Irene Reti
Project
Program/Repository
All uses of these manuscripts are covered by copyright agreement between the interviewees and the Regents of the University of California. Under “fair use” standards, excerpts of up to six hundred words (per interview) may be quoted without the Regional Oral History Project’s permission as long as the materials are properly cited. A sample citation would read: “Excerpted from Rebecca Thistlethwaite: TLC Ranch and the Agriculture & Land-Based Training Association, a transcribed interview conducted by Sarah Rabkin and included in Cultivating a Movement: An Oral History Series on Organic Farming and Sustainable Agriculture, published by the University of California, Santa Cruz Library’s Regional Oral History Project, 2010: http://library.ucsc.edu/reg-hist/cultiv/home).” Quotations of more than six hundred words require the written permission of the University Librarian and a proper citation and may also require a fee. Under certain circumstances, not-for-profit users may be granted a waiver of the fee.
When people ask me, “Should I go into photojournalism?” my response is, “You should follow your passion. If you care about something, you should explore it. Otherwise you’re going to regret that.”