“The Pencil of Nature”
Taking its title from Fox Talbot’s landmark book of photographs (1844-1846), this lively, thoughtful show examines the intimate connection between drawing and photography through the work of twenty-two contemporary artists. A number of them—Vik Muniz, Zeke Berman, Sebastian Bremer, Brian Wood—have always teased and tested the porous border between the two disciplines, sometimes by combining them. Sally Gall’s photograph of a dew-spangled spiderweb and Vija Celmins’s mezzotint of a more austere web could easily switch mediums. A key pleasure of summer group shows is discovery, and here it’s the work of Royce Howes, whose small newsprint-based photocollages of fallen or sleeping men are dense, delicate, and haunting. Through Aug. 20.