Headcase

A May/December match develops at Cerealart.

by Ashlea Halpern

Greg Tobias: photographer, art handler, father. Aged 61 years.

TOTALLY HIDDEN CAMERA: Most of the women Greg Tobias shot didn't know they were being watched, let alone photographed. Photo By: Greg Tobias (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Dan Murphy: photographer, editor, DJ. Age 30.

If this were a modern sitcom, Tobias and Murphy wouldn't share a lick of common ground. They'd be oil and water. Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous. The comical old fogy and the droll young buck.

But what's best about "Old Head-Young Head," their collaborative exhibit opening tonight at Cerealart Project Room, is not its intergenerational contrariness so much as its seamless congruity.

"I like and admire Dan's work," says Tobias. "He's not constrained the way other people are. He's willing to take risks ... to try stuff and fail."

Murphy says as much in fewer words: "I'm into Greg's stuff. We match up."

Tobias, an old friend of Cerealart owner Larry Mangel, met Murphy several years ago through mutual friends, including his son. A professional art handler since the '70s, Tobias attended art school in Philadelphia and lived with his wife in Old City until 1979. He made art from 1972 to 1995, but gave up when it "got too hard. ... Everyone thinks making art is some romantic thing, but it's a job," he sighs. "It's something you do and do and do. It just wasn't fun anymore."

Murphy was on the same page. An original member of the Space 1026 collective and co-founder of experimental art rag Megawords Magazine, he recently returned from a two-week sojourn in Copenhagen, Denmark. For him, the gallery scene is just another outlet, and not one he takes all too seriously. "Megawords has this sort of social responsibility," says Murphy. "I want ['Old Head'] to be more fun."

The images in "Old Head" are extraordinary in their ordinariness: A woman licks ice cream as she crosses the street; a couple embraces mid-stride at the foot of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; a lady in gold-rimmed cop shades walks briskly through a wintry urban terrain.

Separately, each photographer has captured the kind of things we see everyday but rarely notice: colorful sneakers near still water, people lined up waiting for the subway, or a bicycle painted white in honor of its fallen rider.

"Old Head," at its core, is a documentation of normal.

Although Tobias still takes plenty of pictures � "just stuff, everything that goes on around me" � the photos in "Old Head" date back to the mid-'80s, when he would snap whatever caught his eye. Usually a woman. "I was looking at them sexually," he admits. "It's a man's reality. It's OK if you acknowledge, control and understand it." Most of the women he shot didn't know they were being watched, let alone photographed. Tobias estimates that 99.9 percent of the photos were taken from his car, and about 70 percent shot somewhere in Philadelphia.

When Murphy sets to the street with a camera, he hardly ever has an objective in mind: "I shoot things that happen. I'm not looking for car crashes." What happens in Murphy's photos is often inanimate � a building, a street, an unusual pattern.

Tobias, by contrast, is drawn to figures in motion, and strange faces. "I like when people are just being themselves," he says, "scratching their nose or squinting at the sky." Think Weegee or van der Weyden or Diane Arbus, some of Tobias' favorite photographers. "[Arbus is] the person that created sensibly weird pictures of strange people," he notes. "And her sense of composition was amazing."

For Tobias, revisiting the photos of his past has been surprisingly fun. "I'm 25 or 30 years older now, so it's like looking at everything new," he laughs. "My job has always been hanging other people's stuff. Now I'm gonna do it for myself. It's pretty weird putting your own shit on the wall."

(a_halpern@citypaper.net)

Opening reception Thu., June 28, 5-8 p.m., runs through Aug. 31, Cerealart, 149 N. Third St., 215-627-5060, www.cerealart.com.