Portrait of the artist in black and white

Jennifer K Mahal

In soft shades of gray and harsh curves of black, photographer Todd

Webb gives us entrance into the New Mexico world of Georgia O’Keeffe.

The 39 photographs on display until January at the Orange County

Museum of Art’s Satellite Gallery in South Coast Plaza span nearly 30

years of the famed painter’s life -- from 1955 to 1981.

“In Webb’s photos of New Mexico, we see the landscape and O’Keeffe

through the eyes of another artist,” Sarah Vure, curator at the Newport

Beach-based museum, said of “Georgia O’Keeffe: The Artist’s Landscape,”

An O’Keeffe painting and its subject capture Webb’s lens in one

photograph. Another shows a chair, a skull and a bone against the adobe

wall of Ghost Ranch, one of O’Keeffe’s two homes, in 1959.

There is the artist walking through a stream in Twilight Canyon near

Lake Powell in 1964, her back to the camera that captures the slashes of

light that fall through the rock faces.

“Characteristically, O’Keefe remains an enigmatic presence in these

pictures,” said Jack Woody in the companion book to the exhibit, which he

originally curated. “When confronted by the camera she does not catch the

photographer’s eye.”

O’Keeffe, who died in 1986, was one of the most photographed artists

in the world. Her husband, famed New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz,

took more than 300 portraits of her before his death in 1946.

But it is Webb who captured her later in life, exposing the austere

serenity in which she lived in New Mexico.

Born in Detroit in 1905, Webb became inspired to become a photographer

after taking a 10-day workshop taught by Ansel Adams. He tried to emulate

Adams’ vision at first, but soon realized it was not working for him.

Webb spent two years as a Naval photographer with the Seventh Fleet in

the South Pacific before being discharged and moving to New York. It was

there, taking shots of the city’s streets in 1946, that Webb became

acquainted with Stieglitz.

“He was told to show his photos to Alfred Stieglitz at American Palace

gallery in early ‘40s,” Vure said. “He made arrangements with Dorothy

Norman (Stieglitz’s assistant) and was surprised that Stieglitz came out

and looked.”

Webb and Stieglitz became friends. Through that friendship, Webb met

Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, curators of the Museum of Modern Art, who

helped him to get an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York.

That exhibition led to Webb’s first professional assignment and later to

his work for Standard Oil.

In 1955, Webb received a Guggenheim Fellowship to take photos of the

trails used to get to the California and Oregon gold rushes. On his way

west, he stopped by New Mexico to see O’Keeffe. He fell in love with the

area, moving there with his wife, Lucille, in 1961. They lived there for

nine years.

It is the black and white pictures from those years, plus the shots he

took between 1957 and 1960 while visiting O’Keeffe for the summers, that

comprise most of the exhibit.

To get a better idea of how completely Webb, who died in 2000,saw

O’Keeffe’s world, it is necessary to look at some of his other work. His

image of 125th Street in Harlem focuses on a peeling movie poster for

“Her Heaven” in Technicolor. His vision of Madison Street at Pike Street

in New York -- an almost abandoned street with a bridge in the

background, almost hovering.

Webb’s work, shaded in varying hues of gray, is lonely. Rather like

O’Keeffe’s paintings.

“You can see their shared interest in early modernism and simplicity

of light and dark, and how important New Mexico landscape was to this

vision,” Vure said.

FYI

What: “Georgia O’Keeffe: The Artist’s Landscape”

Where: Orange County Museum of Art’s Satellite Gallery at South Coast

Plaza, 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa

When: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Sunday through Jan. 2

Cost: Free

Call: (949) 749-1122