Santa Monica

Tina Barney uses her large-format Ektacolor Plus photographs to peer into upper-middle class family tableaux loaded with rich sociological detail and brewing emotional climates. A natural, unforced depth-of-field lets the viewer browse freely.

In “Marina’s Room,” open closet doors reveal a huge wardrobe fit for a suburban princess. Beautiful little Marina perches on her quilted bed to hear--a lecture? a story?--from her father, who raises his arm in a fuzzy motion--to admonish? to straighten a hair ribbon? A lifesize painting of a rosy-cheeked skier in “The Skier” has an uncanny presence and purposefulness, oddly overshadowing two girls sitting aimlessly at a cluttered dining room table with winter light whitening the two large large windows behind them.

In “Phil’s Barbeque”--with a large swatch of blackness adding an amateur-style raggedness to half the image--Barney captures the dislocations at the heart of a social gathering. Hands seem welded onto paper cups. A boy in the middle distance bends over heavily (to throw up? to tie his shoe?). A startled young bare-chested man in plaid shorts stands next to a serene white-haired lady in a periwinkle dress.

The images represent the inconclusive, transitional moments that make up most of life--the kind of time that doesn’t work in movies or plays. At the same time, the cluttered banality of the scenes takes on the intense fascination of a leisurely description in a 19th-Century novel. (Tatistcheff Gallery, 1547 10th St., Santa Monica, to Jan. 7.)--C.C.