Liba Taylor: “Decency is not relative”

The Czech Photographer & UNYP Lecturer, Liba Taylor granted an interview to the popular Czech newspaper “Lidové Noviny” waxing lyrical about her feelings and ideas and inspirations. She is famous for her documentary projects shot specifically for international humanitarian organizations and focused particularly on Asia, Africa and Latin America.

She started off by stating that the greatest joy a person can have is the joy of others and that honesty is the one human quality which she most appreciates. Erudite, kind, and in possession of a sense of humor: these are some of the features which her friends and, more to the point, her life partner should possess in abundance in order to make her happy. 

As is well known, she has a sense of adventure, so it’s hardly surprising that given the opportunity she would have loved to live life at the turn of 19th and 20th century during the period of English colonialism, she mentioned that Robinson Crusoe is one of her favorite books and that she would, given the chance, like to experience life as a giraffe. 

The American writer and traveler Martha Gellhorn is a personality whom she admires and respects, mainly because of her great travel writing and her bravery as a war correspondent. She places a great emphasis on the importance of literature and desires for this subject to play a more central role in the education system. 

As she sees it, everything in life is relative, apart from one thing: decency. As a result of this conviction, she harbors a strong hatred of people who are getting rich at the expense of the world without contributing one iota to our collective enrichment and development. This would, undoubtedly, be the first thing she would change given the chance to be God for a day.

She ended the interview on an uplifting note, just one sentence that she would like to be remembered by in the case of her death: “Do not cry for me, just as soon we will meet again.”

You can read the full interview in Lidové Noviny in Czech.