Bucci's Art

STEVE CATTON
photographs

March 3 - April 5, 2002

Artist's statement:

The photos in this show are selected from three journeys, spanning an eight year period (1989 - 1997), to Ladakh, a Tibetan Buddhist kingdom in the very far north of India, now part of the state of Jammu & Kashmir. The rather unusual opportunity to have made many of these photos are thanks to my friendship with Lama Thupten Sopa, whom I met on my first visit to Ladakh and traveled with on two subsequent visits across Lahoul and Spiti to Kunu, where he was born and raised. There are also a few photos representing a reciprocal visit to America that I arranged for him in 1994 (his first time out of northern India).

I like to make photos that contain or support a story. I particularly enjoy the geometry of maneuvering myself within three-dimensional space to find the angle that affords the most satisfying balance of spatial relationships between people and objects within the field of view. Sometimes the fourth dimension (time) comes into play as well when there is a moving body or the light is changing. I am especially thrilled when the fates (or the angels if you will) conspire to grant the capturing of a little of the "suchness" of a unique moment and place in time.

It seems almost a small miracle to me when this happens because I remain always acutely aware that photography is the process of abstracting a three-(or four-) dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional piece of paper, and of, moreover, preserving just the visual record of an experience of place which was naturally made up of other senses besides that may have been just as powerful or subtle. These inherent limitations of photography are of course also a major source of it's potential charm, since it is the photograph's power to focus our attention on a certain aspect of that little slice of reality which it may reveal, or preserve for reflection, that makes it so intriguing.

I would like to thank my wife, Cynthia Graebner, for her encouragement, valuable advice, and support in producing this show, and also our dear friend Pam Mendelsohn, a resident of both Arcata and Emeryville, for acting as a virtual unpaid agent in arranging for me to exhibit here after she had earlier exhibited her own work in this same space, as indeed she had done in like manner with a Northcoast gallery we both showed at previously. And finally, I would like to thank our mutual friend Peter Palmquist for his expert assistance in hanging the show.

Steve Catton
Arcata, California

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