Norton's 'Outside/In' a contrasting look at old, new | Palm Beach ...

You can look at "Outside/In" as an extended point/counterpoint ? work from the Norton museum?s core photographic collection juxtaposed with the work of six contemporary Florida photographers and artists.

Or you can look at it as an opportunity to experience a lot of neat pictures.

It is very much a concept show by Tim Wride, the Norton?s new curator of photography, who found his Florida photographers by driving around the state as far north as the Panhandle and as far south as Miami, looking for work that would create the dynamic tension he sought.

Wride mounts the old and new on opposing walls, and for the most part the concepts work.

The classical landscapes of Ansel Adams and Edward Curtis confront recent photographs by Alexander Diaz of St. Augustine, who has been engaged in a series he calls "Florida?s Mountains."

Of course, there are no mountains in Florida; what Diaz is actually shooting are small mounds and hillocks that require careful angles to make them seem plausible as mountains. It?s photography as sleight-of-hand, as well as a joke about scale, and probably a bit of snark about the state. It contrasts with the older work, which simply aimed to document the majesty of the natural world at a time when the beauty of nature had a narrower definition.

It?s an easy contrast, but not inaccurate.

Similarly, some beautifully dynamic Barbara Morgan shots of Martha Graham and Erik Hawkins are confronted by Pensacola?s Valerie George?s contemporary shots of her band desultorily performing before landscapes in Seattle, Chattanooga, Tenn., and Palo Alto, Calif.

George?s shots are comparatively uninteresting except for the aesthetic conversation they provoke ? a self-conscious, intentionally ironic slacker?s version of art compared with a more forceful ? not to mention idealized ? version.

Another George piece involves a color photo shot from the front seat of her car looking through a windshield. A set of headphones provides the aural accompaniment: ambient engine noise and a low-fi AM radio with someone occasionally humming along.

Something far more direct consists in two series of photographs by the Tampa photographer Christopher Morris. One series highlights his war photography from Chechnya that is very much in the Robert Capa mold. Those are confronted by Danny Lyons? shots when he was embedded with the Hell?s Angels, as well as a charming Elliot Erwitt shot of a soldier sticking out his tongue at the camera.

Continuing the theme of isolation are some eerily beautiful, semi-abstract shots of Secret Service agents that Morris did after he became the White House photographer for Time magazine.

Some of the attempted conversations are strained ? Charles Lumm?s shots of old Santa Fe are up against Miami?s Eduardo Del Valle and Mirta Gomez?s recent shots from the Yucatan of skeletal remains exhumed as preparation for display.

But the gap between then and now indigenous cultures is too great, as well as imprecise, and the aesthetics of the photographers too divergent. But Wride only has a working collection of about 3,000 photographs, and occasionally the strain of coming up with a roughly corresponding image shows.

Considerably more successful are some direct exposure shots by Maria Martinez-Canas, who likes to work by placing objects directly on photographic paper, then exposing them. Wride refers to the results as "totemic photographs," but whatever you call them they?re interestingly organic and also obviously endangered, as photographic paper inevitably goes the way of typewriter ribbons.

Outside/In is unusually dense in images and ideas and unusually provocative in its allusions. It bodes well for the future of photography at the Norton.

If you go:

OUTSIDE/ Through June 10, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. Information: (561) 832-5196 or norton.org

sturgis whitney houston laid to rest daytona bike week amazing race maya angelou mary kay ash tiny houses