THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER June 30, 2013

by Edith Newhall

CELLPHONE PHOTOS AT MOORE COLLEGE

Shadow of a Doubt and Walker Evans’ portraits of New York subway riders taken between 1938 and 1941 (he kept a camera in his coat and caught his subjects sitting across the aisle off-guard, but looking suspiciously prepared). They’re the two obvious ancestors of photographer Ditta Baron Hoeber’s mysterious serial cellphone photographs of the interiors of trains, which make up her exhibition “Proximity” in Moore College of Art and Design’s Goldie Paley Gallery. But there’s a glimmer of early, conceptual, pre-Weimaraner William Wegman, too.

What Hoeber stealthily captures with her cellphone camera while traveling by train looks like something in the background of an Evans photo or a Hitchcock film — that mundane bit in an otherwise absorbing image that your eye would never naturally gravitate to. More often than not, it’s extremely difficult to recognize what she has actually shot. Many of the images produced by her seemingly unfamiliar perspectives and extreme close-ups suggest painted abstractions of spaces, but they’re entirely photographic and real — in fact, train riders see their environment from Hoeber’s perspectives every day but would never think of them as subjects for photographs, likewise the closeups.

The three photographs that constitute Hoeber’s Gray Step probably depict an actual set of molded plastic steps as seen from above (with part of a person’s knee or elbow jutting into the frame), but the images also could pass for a concrete wall seen straight-on. The two photographs in Yellow might be a view of Hoeber’s lap and the floor of the train. I’m still not sure.

Hoeber is also a poet, and she joins her poems in sequences similar to those of her photographs; she uses the white page and spaces between words in the same way she presents her photographs, with areas of white around and between them, to create a sense of stillness. Though I would have read Hoeber’s poems in the gallery had they been available — I caught up with them later, on her website, dbhoeber.com — I think the decision to show the photographs by themselves was the right one. There’s plenty of poetry in this room.

More of Hoeber’s work — in this case, serial selfportraits — can be seen in “17 Women,” a group show organized by artist Anne Minich for the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral.

The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, 20th and Race Streets. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Thursday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday. 215-965-4027 or www.thegalleriesatmoore.org. Through Aug. 31. Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, 38th Street between Chestnut and Market Streets. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays. 215-386-0234. Through July 31.