Rachael Talibart's award-winning photographs capture the wildness of the ocean in a profoundly sculptural fashion. Her latest series, Sirens, combines a love of maritime mythology with a collection of monster waves frozen in time, transforming the watery forms into representations of Greek Gods.
Talibart began her life as a career-driven solicitor living in the city of London. Her life-long passion for photography slowly came to dominate her focus, and in 2000 she left the city before a 2008 conversion to digital photography entirely solidified her new career path.
Her latest ongoing series began in 2016 when the photographer began visiting Newhaven Beach in East Sussex. The shots of tumultuous, stormy seas were captured using a telescopic lens and super-fast shutter speeds, often at 1/1000 of a second. The fast shutter speeds allows Talibart to freeze the waves, creating wondrous organic forms.
"On the days I make these photographs, the sea is beautiful but also terrifying," Talibart writes of her Sirens series. "I feel utterly insignificant, yet completely enriched by these encounters with wildness, and that is what I have tried to communicate in the photographs."
One of her Sirens images won Talibart the 2018 Photographer of the Year award from Black+White magazine. The moody monochrome image pictured below is titled Nyx, named after the primordial Greek goddess of the night. Talibart's Sirens series was also shortlisted in the Professional category as part of the massive Sony World Photography Awards.
Talibart's work will appear in several upcoming exhibitions, including The Brighton Photography Gallery, Brighton, UK, 7 - 27 September, and Sohn Fine Art Gallery in the Berkshires in Lenox, MA, USA, 7 September - 11 November. The Sirens series has been published and you can grab a copy of the book here.
Take a look through our gallery for a glimpse of more remarkable images from Talibart.
Source: Rachael Talibart