Enrico Natali was born August 10,1933 in Carthage New York. He attended the Coast Guard Academy with the intention of becoming an engineer. During his studies he shifted his interest to photography. After attending the academy and time in the army Natali worked in the photographic studio of Anton Bruehl in New York City in the mid-1950’s. 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 Chicago Art Institute where he become close friends with Hugh Edwards, the curator of Photography. Natali’s appreciation of Edwards was Edwards’ willingness to the show works of talented photographers who were not known.

In 1967 Natali learned about J. Krishnamurti, a world teacher of self realization. It took several years before he was able to integrate those teachings that 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.

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