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Give the Phillips Collection points for hooking up this year with the just-completed FotoWeekDC—but its entry is small and seemingly halfhearted.
Spread between a couple rooms on two different floors, the exhibit includes examples from some early, immersive, performance-based works by Nikki S. Lee, including examples from her lesbian series and her Hispanic series. Two decades after these images were made, Lee’s ability to blend in plausibly with almost any crowd remains impressive, and her informal, timestamp-embossed style continues to communicate authenticity.
In a very different vein, Jungjin Lee offers a pair of black-and-white works that toy cleverly with landscape—one that turns the intersection of patches of snow and rock into one bold diagonal form, and another that documents a dreamy, choppy-textured body of water.
In yet another, very different vein, Franceso Nonino produces a decidedly retro black-and-white image of a partially obscured man in a hallway, suggesting a mysterious still from a ‘40s-era noir film.
However, the most memorable image of the bunch is by James Casabere. His photograph “Sing Sing 2” (above) harnesses a spooky-sounding technique—a dye-destruction print—to present a shadowy rendition of the exterior of a jailhouse building, an apt conflation of style and substance.
Through Jan. 31 at the Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. Tue-Wed-Fri-Sat 10 a.m. -5 p.m., Sun 12-7 p.m., Thu 10 a.m.-8:30 p.m.