Shmuel Thaler
2016 Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year Shmuel Thaler has been a staff photographer at the Santa Cruz Sentinel since 1987. His photographs have been published in every leading newspaper in the United States as well as in Time and Newsweek, and viewed on the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News and he has been honored three times with awards in the prestigious National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism contest. Shmuel has also co-authored 5 children’s books and his photographs illustrate numerous books including his collaboration with George Levenson on ‘Bread Comes to Life’ and the classic ‘Pumpkin Circle’, which has more than 100,000 copies in print and is held by every major library system in the country.