About Ashley Thalman

In the early 1980′s my dad invested in a top of the line Pentax 35 mm camera and photography classes. We weren’t wealthy by any definition but my Dad spent his time and money filling boxes with negatives and prints that told the story of us. His are photos that share and value the evidence of our living. Our flaws, our messes, our unkempt and deliberate.  The “domestic debris” as photographer Jessica Todd Harper has called it. I was raised to value that type of portrait then and I now, as a photographer myself, I value it today.

Portraits should say something about the people and places they document and about the life they have lived. About the creeks in the floors and the wrinkles on faces. A beautiful portrait is an honest portrait. I am dedicated to making images that will increase in value because of their timelessness and ability to communicate the individual and the singular of place and person, family and event.

If I weren’t a photographer, in favorites. 

If I weren’t a photographer I would write words. Words to describe particular loves like the love of a mother, or the love that follows forgiveness. Stories that tell of the way light moves across Russian Olive trees when their scent takes over west Provo. I would write to create that connection we feel to favorite authors who reveal parts of ourselves to us and when they do all of space and time collapse to connect us making us feel perfectly understood.  I would write like that.

If I weren’t a photographer I would sing great songs. Songs that give the singular lift of Joni Mitchell’s Case of You or the raw magic feel of Neil Young’s rasp. The joy of brunch songs and the love songs that hit it nail-head on. I would sing harmony to those songs.