June 30-July 6, 2005

artpicks

Camera Camouflage

photography

Stark in a manner that conjures the dust-bowl cinematography of Gregg Toland for John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath — a silver halide whose whites seem tinged with browns — Keith Sharp's toned gelatin prints suggest beauty beyond circumstance. Though Sharp tags his work, or at least his newest series, "Something Peculiar," "surrealistic" in a Hitchcockian way, there is little vertigo to what he does. Instead, he creates a perception-shifting look with works like the frizzy-headed Hair and the untouched billow of Clouds. "I see the strangeness beneath the surface," he says.

Unlike his previous series of photographic diptychs ("Same While Different") and its emphasis on organic mimicry, "Something Peculiar" is stagier and more self-referential, as he's implicated himself into each of his photos. Using props and paint, Sharp transforms himself to blend in with the natural environment in an oddly theatrical manner. The images show off what one would guess is — especially from his head-hidden Tunnel — his introverted side. "In these photographs as well as in real life, I fit in and then again I don't fit in to my surroundings," says Sharp.

"Something Peculiar," reception Fri., July 1, 5-8:30 p.m., through July 24, MUSE Gallery, 60 N. Second St., 215-627-5310.

—A.D. Amorosi