Today we’d like to introduce you to Meital Dor.
Meital, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I received my bachelor’s degree in interior architecture in 2001 and have been working for many years as a systems analyst and quality assurance tester. Yet, my soul never stopped searching for my real calling in this life. I know it sound silly or kitsch, but I really believe something big was waiting for me out there, and I couldn’t give it a rest until I find it.
Eight years ago, I realized there would never be a good time to make a change in my life, and on a Saturday morning, while watching an interview with another Israeli photographer, I made a decision.
“I’m quitting,” I announced to my husband while he was sitting peacefully on the couch in our living room reading the weekend newspaper. I remember the mixed feelings I had about this hasty decision to this day, yet my heart and my strong intuition made it known to me in no uncertain terms that although I was leaving a stable and good job, I was heading in the right direction.
My first photography experience was with food photography. A good friend of mine in Israel had a small bakery business. Her products were delightfully tasty, but the pictures she used to advertise her baked goods were terrible. I offered to help her strengthen her business and I combined food styling and photography without any prior experience. I felt that all the skills and knowledge I gathered over the years helped me learn how to build a composition, to see and understand light, and to combine colors, textures, and materials. Back then the “Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver and the Australian food stylist Donna Hay were my sources of inspiration – I interpreted their images as free and full of passion; they had drama, complexity, and courage in the way they chose to present food.
After couple of years, I’ve started to photograph people, mostly children. I didn’t know at the time why I was drawn to capture childhood. Only later did I understand that I wanted to allow children to be seen as they truly were in their own space. I wanted to capture their true essence before the world would change them and force them into conventional boxes.
From that time until 18 months ago, when we moved from our little homeland, Israel, and relocated to Dallas, I’ve kept looking for interesting and unique human stories to share with the world. Leaving Israel and creating a new life for me and my family was less intimidating because the thought of the photography opportunities and the people I will meet here was stronger than any obstacle that might occur in our new lives.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My journey in photography was luckily not that easy for me. At first, I wasn’t sure why I chose to photograph complex and nuanced, and not only the shiny side of reality, and why I was drawn to people with moving and sometimes painful stories. Gradually, I understood that this is what I wanted to bring to our world – the truth about life, about who we are as human beings. I wanted to present real people and to make the viewers think and feel through the images I put out there. I felt I’ve had a different perspective, and I had to be firm and to continue seeing and sharing those stories and issues. I knew it would take time for people to understand what I was attempting to do, and my customers and audience may not come so quickly.
One of my challenges was also to make my husband believe that I really needed to stay true to myself. Yes, I can photograph almost anything, but I don’t want to present pictures that are only beautiful; they have to be also meaningful, even if it’s a bakery business. There’s a one-of-a-kind story behind every business and its owners, and that story needs to be shown.
Now that I’m getting settled in the US, I feel that the greatest challenge facing me is to understand the culture I’m in and to figure out how to find the right connections that will help me find work, as well as continue telling the stories of our society and humankind. Day by day, I keep moving and understand that creating here is very different from Israel, but it is not impossible.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My toolbox is not heavy. It contains my open heart, natural light, empathy, lack of agendas, curiosity and my camera.
I document beautiful moments of families, childhood, businesses, social issues, small events, intimate moments of birth, and powerful moments of the end of life. Observation without preempting is my strongest skill. Being a good listener is also one of my abilities, and not being judgmental helps me get closer to people.
I truly believe that in our humanity, we are all the same. We all want and need to be seen and heard and be loved. Understanding that, I think people feel comfortable and safe to open up to me and share with me their life story and some details they never shared before.
My first meaningful photographic documentation was of Sahman Alchoush, a 3-year-old Palestinian child from Hebron, Israel, who died of Neuroblastoma. This documentation won an international competition on the subject Transformation in the 8th International Photography Festival PHOTO IS: RAEL, in Tel Aviv-Israel.
Before I said goodbye to Sahman’s mother, Tasneem, at their home in Hebron, I promised her that her son will never be forgotten. And indeed, this documentation was published and exhibited on several platforms, and in May 2023, it is presented as part of a group exhibition at the MoMA in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Sahman’s parents and I are friends till this day, and from my perspective, it wasn’t a political story I wanted to share, it was a personal and intimate story which reflects a reality to which anyone can relate.
It talks about loss and being helpless, about being dependent on another, about a political conflict and family crisis, about a nonprofit organization “The Road to Recovery,” who leads in small steps and with great humanity to a significant social change that brings hearts together, and conveys a message of the absence of borders, separation, and differences.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
My favorite food is my traditional Yemenite Jewish bread called Kubaneh. Basically, it’s made of flour, yeast, water, margarine, sugar, and salt, and it keeps me full for eight whole hours.
When I feel like I lost my “creative hunger” and maybe got out of track, I play on YouTube the motivational speech Oprah Winfrey’s Life Advice Will Change Your Future, which she gave to the Spelman College class of 2021. Her words “…I want to fulfill the highest, truest expression of myself as a human being…” bring me back to the belief I have in my path and to the strength I have in me to keep moving on.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.meitaldor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meital_dor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meital.m.dor
