Lise Luttgens’ travel photographs are wonderfully free of convention. Instead of snapping well-known landmarks and vistas, she points her camera at the rich details of a locale to evoke a powerful sense of place. “I tend to like displays and focus on how people put together windows,” says Luttgens, who shares a townhouse in the Palisades Highlands with her 16-year-old daughter, Kate. Last fall, Luttgens traveled by ship from Venice to Istanbul and her colorful, offbeat impressions of this journey are now on view in a photo exhibition at the Hidden Caf’. There are no images of St. Mark’s Square or the canals of Venice; her take on this city is all about groupings of Murano glass. In Istanbul, she roamed the vast Grand Bazaar for seven hours straight, where she translated the visual extravaganza of this famed marketplace into striking compositions of plates and pashminas. The spice market provided yet another spectacle for her talented eye, with displays of fish, figs, saffron and olives artfully framed in her viewfinder. In contrast to the frenetic marketplace, the quiet elegance of mosque interiors also is illuminated in her original work. When not feeding her fervor for travel and photography, Luttgens is a busy professional who provides executive leadership to nonprofit and health care organizations through her own consulting firm. She was senior vice president and chief operating officer at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles from 1995 to 2001 and most recently served as interim chief executive officer of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern California. Yet photography has been a constant throughout much of her life, beginning as a high school student growing up in San Francisco. Her father, a physician, was a serious photo hobbyist whose interest led him to study with Ansel Adams in Yosemite. “He taught me early on the science of photography and built me a darkroom in the attic,” says Luttgens, who remembers whole days happily spent locked away developing and printing pictures. In college, she and a classmate were awarded a grant to travel to New Mexico and produce a slide show about Native Americans. “We set it to music and, of course in those days, it was Cat Stevens,” Luttgens says with a laugh. Aside from this experience, however, Luttgens’ studies were directed elsewhere. She has a B.A. from Beloit College and a master’s degree in public health from Yale. She credits a slew of adventure-filled trips’beginning with Africa in 1995’as reigniting her picture-taking instincts. What followed was a trip with her daughter to Alaska, a South American cruise along the coast of Chile and Argentina and, three years ago, a tour of Australia that culminated in scuba diving with sharks at the Great Barrier Reef. On another trip, Luttgens and her daughter intended to enroll at the language institute when visiting San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, but the marketplace won over, with both mother and daughter consumed with taking pictures. When Luttgens was tapped by Mary Autera, owner of the Hidden Caf’, to exhibit her work in the restaurant, she felt a touch overwhelmed. “I have a reasonably good eye; it’s the technical side of things that is a challenge,” she says. “I wasn’t sure I could pull it together working 60 hours a week.” In stepped Mazi Aghalarpour of Village Photo, who saved the day by assisting Luttgens in sorting through 550 digital images to choose the best 40, and who also lent his expertise in printing. “The whole point of photography is you don’t have to say anything,” Luttgens says in regard to what she values most about the medium. “All you have to do is let people look, and then words aren’t necessary.” The show continues at the Hidden Caf’, 1515 Palisades Dr. in the Highlands through April 23. Photographs, all printed in either an 8 x 10 or 8 x 12 format, are for sale: $35, matted; $60 framed. Contact: 230-9823.
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