What's also interesting about Wasow's project, though, is what it tells us about how we read photography. Art photography was and is about staking out a signature style, while vernacular photography is interesting for almost the opposite reason...

Beth Reisman, on the other hand, is a find. Her Losing My Religion (2006) and Isle (2007) evince an artist still in formation—and well worth watching. In the paintings, masses of small, topographical shapes coalesce into lumpy, anonymous personages. Drifting upon shadows or, perhaps, flying carpets, they navigate across dense, uninflected fields of color—weird and intense variations on blue and pink. Surrealistic without yielding to trite sentiment, Ms. Reisman channels Clyfford Still’s jagged forms, as well as a skewed Pop sensibility: The dry absurdism of Yellow Submarine is evident. Her oddball art will get better the odder it (or she) gets, and at this juncture, there’s no reason to worry that it won’t.