Venice Beach, California, circa 2012 — Hand-altered blown-up Polaroids of teachers hung in the lobby of Exhale, aka Sacred Movement, the yoga sanctuary. These portraits exuded the essence of the teachers who taught there – Erich Schiffmann in his loving exuberance, arms extending up toward the bursting sky; Jo Tastula in her full grace, lotus on the beach, a hibiscus tucked above her ear. The artist was Robert Sturman, and this is how I first came to know him. His art was growing in influence; his presence, humble. Back then, classes were 90 minutes long, some an incredibly indepth 120, and you’d often find Robert there, right beside you, just another yogi, doing the practice.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Robert’s work continues to capture the soul of the practice. Beyond yogis, his subjects also include those who live lives far beyond the mat — War Veterans, Police officers, Prisoners, Cancer survivors, students at the Braille institute — all in the unaffected, authentic practice of yoga. In an era when yoga can seem so very inaccessible and exclusive, Robert’s work is inclusive, tangible and, when revealing a breast cancer survivor, raw. His task is to be the Sakshin, the witness, to those who diligently show up to practice.
As we wind down the incredible 2020, here is a man whose task in life is to behold the beauty and the suffering, the dignity and the sincerity, helping us to see the humanity within each one of us. In Robert’s own words, "I often think of Rumi's words 'I can't stop pointing to the beauty.' That feels right to me."

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, around 14 years old, I started to experience those first feelings of uncertainty and loneliness and a hint of depression, just the whole human mix of not feeling so good. I ended up going to a boarding school in Idyllwild, California and when my father dropped me off at the school, he gave me my first camera. I was so naïve, I asked him what I was supposed to take pictures of, and he said, Photograph what you love! I remembered that. It was one of the most important pieces of advice I would ever get.

As a teenager, I was very bad at photography. I was insecure and unsure of myself. But every once in a while, I got lucky and would make a cool picture, and then I learned over time, how to control that luck. And eventually, it became a skill. So, over the years, photography was my thing. I used it as a way to deal with the deep uncertainty and sadness of being a human being, a way of grasping toward something that might make me feel okay. But my heroes in the history of art, for the most part, they all lived lives of desperation and self-destruction. I was so ideologically conditioned to believe that story – that artists suffer. Artists overdose on drugs. Artists are broke, their relationships fail, they wake up drunk in the gutter. I saw a lot of people go down that road and it was waiting for me with open arms. I always knew I had a choice.

I took my first yoga class when I was 18. I was an athlete but that class was the hardest thing I had ever done. Planks, side planks, even downdog was a massive struggle after a few seconds. Dripping with sweat, shaking, praying to survive! But I kept at it. It was there, in the asana practice, and in the breathing, and the learning to sit still in the pain, the fire of existence and the ability to just really sit through it without reaching for things — that I learned about myself and about my art. I saw, and still see, yoga as a beautiful poetic expression of humanity in pursuit of being better at being human.

My camera and Yoga led me to India. I was thirty. I started the journey in Pune at Osho’s meditation center — just to get acclimated to the culture. So here I was — on my way into the unknown to photograph India with my Polaroid process. It was so other planetary to me. I was actually terrified and questioning what in the world I was getting myself into. When I walked in Osho’s center, there was a big sign. The title of it was “The way of the Creator.” To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.

And so, there it was.

The missing link to my education and a nod to what my dad had told me when I was 14, Photograph what you love. I realized that I could make my life a masterpiece and that my art was my life and my work was going to be an expression of a life that I was living, a life that I loved.

That quote gave me permission for the first time to write a new story of the artist. That was the true beginning of my yoga journey, and my journey as a photographer, too.

Jacob Parit Noomi, Maasai Warrior ~ Mount Kilimanjaro, Kenya

Dan Nevins ~ Veteran turned Yoga Teacher

AT EXHALE, where I used to practice, I became friends with this guy who happened to be a cop. And I thought, wow, that would be so cool to do a shoot with you while you're in uniform. He’s a really good friend and we were just hanging out one day while he was on break and in uniform, and I told him to get into a dancer pose by his squad car and posted it. Before I knew it, the photograph had gone completely viral and I realized people were so hungry for the humanity of it. Of everything. The more I started to create pictures like that, the more it grew.

Over the years, I've developed a reputation for focusing on the outliers of our culture and share that yoga is for anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere. I do very little commercial work. The work I'm doing honors the goodness within each human being and that has gained me trust over the years, inspiring people who want to tell their story. Maasai Warriors in Africa; the Prison Yoga Project; Breast Cancer survivors; firefighters, police officers; soldiers; folks at the Braille Institute, people on Skid Row – they all practice yoga. Humanity. This is my yoga, really. Yoga is the art of how you do anything. For me, my art is my yoga, and photography has given me a way to embrace every kind of human being on the planet.

The past few years, I’ve had opportunities to go down a different road. I could have been a very successful influencer photographer, photographing all the fancy people doing the fanciest poses. But it would have been a crime against my own wisdom. You know the expression, Crimes against Wisdom? We know what self-destruction is in our everyday life, whether it's not meditating, or eating junk, or being in a relationship that's toxic, or your relationship with alcohol. We know that if it's against our wisdom, we are committing these crimes. So, for me in the last couple of years, and even more since the pandemic started, I wanted to move more toward wisdom. Seeing so many people around me give themselves permission to be more self-destructive during this pandemic, inspired me to go in the opposite direction and use this as an opportunity to let go of things that do not serve me.

Black Lives Matter Protests ~ Los Angeles

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was an incredibly powerful civil rights movement happening right here in America, and in Los Angeles, my hometown. I've never been a photojournalist, but I've been a photographer since I was 14 years old and this was the most important thing that's ever happened in my lifetime. And I wasn't going to miss it. So, I stayed up all night watching documentaries on war photographers, and I got a press pass, and then I went out there. Yeah, there was a pandemic going on. My mother and father are in their 80’s and my father is recovering from lung cancer and being that they are high risk, I had caution on my mind every step of the way. But I had to be out there because I knew that this was a remarkable moment in history.

Black Lives Matter Protest ~ Los Angeles

So, I went from shooting yoga poses to the protests in Downtown LA. And it all felt so natural. Yoga philosophy teaches us that we are all equal. We’re ONE. But reality is showing us a different story. And that's why I wanted to be part of this fight. That’s why I wanted to document it. Instead of reaching towards the sky as we do in yoga, with the hand mudra of intuitive wisdom, human beings were reaching to the sky with a fist. People were really showing up to be seen and heard. It was extraordinary. It was beautiful…

You know it. You know it’s true. The human heart is the most sophisticated tool we have. And we have a responsibility to use it right.