Catharine Stebbins at Newspace

by Chas Bowie, for The Oregonian
Thursday July 30, 2009, 9:44 AM

“END no.2”, 2005

Getting Down

Silence and solitude overwhelm the low desert landscapes of Altadena, Calif., photographer Catharine Stebbins, on view at Newspace. Culled from her "Certain Places" series, the square compositions offer worm's eye views of the land in soft, muted tones.

With her camera resting directly on the dry ground, Stebbins uses an evocatively shallow depth of field to render only a small slice of the photo in focus. In lesser hands, these would be little more than pretty nature pictures, but Stebbins works with a painterly sense of light and a poet's sense of space and nature.

As if to argue against the majestic landscapes of fellow Californians Ansel Adams and Carleton Watkins, Stebbins' photographs reveal very little of the land. But what she does show -- the jazzy composition of a bramble patch, the bonsai-like grandeur of a palm-sized stone and the dappled quality of early morning light on a cluster of sage leaves -- are intimate spaces of profound and quiet beauty.

Newspace Center for Photography, 1632 S.E. 10th Ave.; 503-963-1935, www.newspacephoto.org.
Hours: Monday-Thursday 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday-Sunday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., through Aug. 2.