Images of beauty’s underside

Young Chang

Claire Steinberg went to the Eiffel Tower and didn’t look up. Others

walked away to view the monument from afar or climbed it to feel the

height, but Steinberg, a photographer, wandered around the bottom.

She wanted to know what was going on at the pedestal, at the very

beginning. She found a profound network of structural lines and a sense

of scale. She felt a bit like an ant.

All from the bottom.

“I want to explore the thing that is not so obvious,” said Steinberg,

whose works will be exhibited at the Susan Spiritus Gallery through

January. “Roses are beautiful and all these photographers do these roses,

but c’mon. There’s more to be seen!”

Like a camellia’s underside.

Titled “Faded Beauty,” one of her color images shows a faded camellia

fallen on a path of rocks. It fell perfectly, Steinberg said, with no

change in its form. She almost stepped on it, but instead stopped and

admired it.

“There’s beauty in living matter that changes in its cycle from birth

to death,” she said. “And the underside of a camellia is something we

never look at because we’re so busy looking at the top of it.”

The Los Angeles resident holds steadfast to the theory that

photographers and artists need to maintain an interest in what they see,

because it’s only after you see something that you feel something.

“I’m always saying to all my students ‘get down and get up,”’

Steinberg said. “When you photograph a child, get down to their level.

Half the time I’m groveling and lying on the ground. But I don’t care if

I get my silk shirt dirty.”

Steinberg became the picture editor for Popular Photography magazines

and annuals in New York in 1969 and has had a freelance career as a

photojournalist with “People” and “Rolling Stone.”

She has exhibited her work at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, at

Photokina in Cologne, Germany, and in various California locations. She

graduated as an art major from University of California, Los Angeles and

teaches from time to time.

She insists upon full-frame shots, where what you see is what you get.

“Everything is composed in the camera,” Steinberg said. “I don’t crop

my images.”

Artists deal with the edges of canvases, she said, and photographers

need to accept the edge of their photographic space. Her suggestion is

either zoom in to get close or use a different lens.

But it’s cheating to crop.

Her current show is titled “Palette Beaute” and explores the theme

that there is beauty in everything -- in aging and in vanishing worlds.

One image she considers pivotal is of two naked boys clinging to a

tree along the Oronoco River in South America. They had the most

beautiful skin color and the most beautiful posture, she said. You can

only see their backs, but they’re looking ahead, as if searching for

food. It was a moment she thought she would lose but didn’t.

Steinberg said the picture is about “sublime beauty and purity.”

Susan Spiritus, owner of the Susan Spiritus Gallery, calls Steinberg’s

work unusual, different and “painterly.”

“I wouldn’t be exhibiting it if I didn’t think it was excellent,”

Spiritus said. “She has a very beautiful eye.”

By “painterly,” Spiritus is referring to how Steinberg’s images look

on archival arches drawing paper, where the ink seeps in.

Steinberg uses a technique called iris printing done by Nash Editions,

which does not involve photographic paper.

“I didn’t want the gloss,” Steinberg said. “The gloss is like a

veneer. You have to look through it to see the image.”

She prefers things as they are.

Her husband, Larry Greenberg, is a scientist. A trained observer, he

admires his wife’s powers of observation.

“Everything Claire does is unique,’ Greenberg said. “She just sees

things differently from the way I do.”

In Italy, Steinberg noticed a cup of espresso on a pink damask

tablecloth. It was a perfect cup of espresso, she said, because it

contained crema, the foaming oil of the coffee bean. The light fell on

the spoon, moved across the table and permeated the image.

“I have infatuations with life,” Steinberg said, “The trivial is

important.”

FYI

WHAT: Claire Steinberg’s exhibit “Palette Beaute.”

WHEN: Today through January. A reception for the artist will be held

today and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.

WHERE: Susan Spiritus Gallery, 3929 Birch St., Newport Beach

COST: Free

CALL: (949) 474-4321