continuing to look at West Coast photographers…

Catharine Stebbins was born in Palm Springs, CA, and perhaps that led to her to her affinity for heat and landscapes. Catherine has a unique viewpoint, turning her camera into unremarkable vistas, yet able to create sensory, elegant, and emotional images in the series, Certain Places. Certain Places will be on exhibition at the Newspace Gallery in Portland this July.

“These are portraits of the evocative feelings and emotions that overcome me; an invitation to go where the past coexists with the present, uncertainty mingles with anticipation, and the familiar delivers the unexpected.

Intuition and memory profoundly shaped my experience of place. The genesis of this series began on childhood vacations, as my family crisscrossed the west in our station wagon on long summer vacations. The view through the backseat window became my portal into a world of imagination and possibility, where time stood still as the vast open spaces slid by in stop motion, framed like natural dioramas.”

Her new series, Microwave Eruptus, is a welcome humorous take on what happens when something spends too much time in the microwave.

“This project pays homage to science, the field of systematic discovery. A chance explosion while reheating leftovers in the microwave inspired this work. Something about a splatter of tomato sauce, and burnt edged bubbles in a pool of melted cheese called out “photograph me!” And so I did.”

Fish 3:02

Carrots 3:24

Chesnut 2:28

Egg 2:21

Apple (Granny Smith) 4:47

Marshmallow 1:00

Images from Certain Places