Enrico Natali

Photography

My intent is to make visible the beauty of that which we take for granted, that which is so common that it all but disappears. For in the experience of the beautiful, the inherent nature of reality—that every moment is complete in and of itself, independent of subject matter, time, or place—is revealed. From this perspective, the door to paradise is as easily accessed through McDonald’s as through the Museum of Modern Art.

In my view art, philosophy, religion, and science are all pointing in the same direction, to Truth, to the Unknown. Their value lies solely in how effective they are in that pursuit.

After service in the United States Coast Guard Academy and Army, Enrico Natali worked in the photographic studio of Anton Bruehl in New York City in the mid-1950s. He decided to teach himself photojournalism and began by photographing people in the subway. Natali became so involved that he practically lived there for four months. One night, looking through his photographs, he realized that they were larger than he, and that photography was his vocation. America and Americans was his subject.

Enrico’s photographic life has taken two distinct phases. The first was from 1960 to 1972. During that phase he traveled around the country photographing in black and white, urban landscapes and people. The photographs eventually were published in several books:

New American People (Morgan & Morgan, New York, 1972)
New York Subway,1960 (Nazraeli Press, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2012)
American Landscapes 1968 - 1990 (Panopticon Press, Boston, 1991), with photographer Mark Sandrof
Detroit 1968, Photographs by Enrico Natali (Foggy Notion BO, 2013)

In 1968 Natali taught for a year at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he became close friends with Hugh Edwards, the curator of Photography and Media. Natali’s appreciation of Edwards was Edwards’ willingness to show works of talented photographers who were not known.

In 1967 Natali learned about J. Krishnamurti, a world wisdom teacher. It took several years before he integrated the teachings that then became a serious focus in his life. In 1972 after attending a talk by Krishnamurti at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Natali had a transformational experience that shifted his focus from photographing to self-inquiry and shortly thereafter he began a serious Zen practice.

Enrico met his wife Nadia in New York City in 1971, and they moved to the wilderness near Ojai California where they raised a family and in 1990 started a meditation center called Blue Heron Center for Integral Studies. In Natali’s view, photography is another form of meditation whose function is to point to the Great Unknown of which we all partake.

The second photographic phase began in 2001 when Natali began to take photographs again, working exclusively in color and using a digital camera. For ten years his subject was urban landscape, then he shifted to photographing people.

Natali has self-published another series of books with work from this period:

The Color of Paradise
The Mysterious Presence of Being
In the Blink of an Eye
Every Luminous Moment
Everyday Nirvana

More on Enrico Natali’s work can be found on our Links page.