Explosive sensual color. Thick dynamic brushstrokes. Delicate shards of reflected light. Temel Nal’s unique photoworks unite the opposite forces of abstract and figurative in a powerful interaction of imagination and reality. “I feel color, I sense light……” are the fundamentals that drive him to create his emotional and strong images. Nal has been transforming every day with his camera since 1996. Skylines, cars, fields of flora, architecture, Oriental Bazaars, people – all chosen subjects that he elevates from the literal, with his specific – never divulged – photographic technique. His easy relationship with intense color and powerful emotion make his work highly accessible to the viewer. He kicks open your senses with his swathes of camera “strokes”, inviting us to reconsider the values that we ascribe to the everyday.

Fundamental to all his works is the astounding fact that they are not computer-manipulated. Starting with an analog camera in the early years, he changed to digital with the advent of that new technology. All of Nal’s images have been and are the result of the technique he uses whilst taking the photo. There is no post-production manipulation, only a minimal enhancement in the definition and color intensity of the image. Not unlike film development in the analog era.

In a world where it is taken for granted that photographic images are incessantly enhanced, his direct-creation in situ is like a breath of fresh air. Janus-faced technology does not come into the equation. He calls this “Pure Photo Impression”. Emphasizing that his final image is pure, untampered and the exact rendition of what he was feeling at the time and place of the work’s genesis. He uses his camera – to re-quote Fox Talbot – as “the pencil of art”. This disregard of technology gives his work a highly personal, self-reflexive slant, bold and vibrant colors contained within the artificial boundaries of the canvas, tempered with the unexpected of strong, liberated emotion.