One inspiration for this show was photographs of rooms in which portraits are on display by Sheila Pree Bright, Joelle Jensen, and Jessica Rowe. This expanded to include images of people with portraits, like a relatively unknown Shelby Lee Adams image, “Mother and Child,” that was part of a New York Times project. It is surprising how many artists work on individual portraits that describe a community, and then become another type of portrait: Marco Ambrosi’s studio photographs of Verona’s West African immigrants in their Sunday best. Rachel Dunville’s intimate and trusting photographs of friends and neighbors in her small, mid-western town reassure us. O Rufus Lovett’s images from Weeping Mary, Texas are a portrait of place as well as people, taken over time. Dave Anderson also looks at people to say something about a place.

A number of these images repeat a rhythm of details. Similar, if not exact themes compare Roger Eberhard’s “Russian Street Worker” and Brad Temkin’s “Kevin Walsh, Mississippi”. There are physiological portraits that show waiting, and interpretive images that sometimes take a different approach as in the work of Vicki Topaz and Stan Gaz. This show is about looking, finding clues, and comparing details, and maybe smiling as we see how we are alike.

Artists in the show include: Shelby Lee Adams, Mary Presley Adams, Mauro Altamura, Marco Ambrosi, David Anderson, Roswell Angier, Sheila Pree Bright, David Wilson Burnham, Julie Dennis Brothers, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Peikwen Cheng, Albert Chong, Annabel Clark, Valdir Cruz, Rachael Dunville, Roger Eberhard, Amy Elkins, Martine Fougeron, Allen Frame, Wyatt Gallery, Stan Gaz, Justin Guariglia, Charles Harbutt, Jefferson Hayman, Jason Horowitz, Joelle Jensen, Jimmy & Dena Katz, Rafaelo Kazakov, Mark Kessell, Yasutaka Kojima, Milomir Kovacevic, Jason Langer, Li Jie Liu, O Rufus Lovett, Joseph Maida, Gratiane de Moustier, Mladen Pikulic, Dan Nelken, Frances Scully Osterman, Mark Osterman, Sung Jin Park, Paolo Pellegrin, Matthew Pillsbury, Nicholas Prior, Chris Rauschenberg, Frank Rodick, Jessica Rowe, Junsik Shin, Elizabeth Siegfried, Inbal Sivan, Radek Skrivanek, Will Steacy, Maura Sullivan, Joseph Szabo, Brad Temkin, Vicki Topaz, Charles Traub, Preston Wadley, Ann Weathersby, Frederic Weber and Marc Yankus