Photo Exhibitions Center on Self-Portraits

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibition “Selections From the Audrey and Sidney Irmas Collection of Photographic Self-Portraits 1940-96,” unintentionally suggests particularly sticky problems inherent in making pictures of oneself with a camera.

One of three smaller exhibitions introducing recent additions to the permanent collection, this show is an interesting and unusual compendium that provokes a range of reactions. I happened to be struck by a quality of itchy self-consciousness that appears to be virtually endemic in self-portraits by artists as various as Man Ray and Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman and Irving Penn, Joel Peter Witkin and Cindy Sherman.

It may be simply that these people are generically more at ease behind the lens than in front of it. Back there you can see what you’re doing and you needn’t shoot until the subject looks right. In front of their cameras, the photographers are blind and--mirrors notwithstanding--can only guess how they look.

This may account for a noticeable degree of overacting. Joseph Beuys appears to take himself entirely too seriously in a near-life-size enlargement as he strides toward the lens underlined with the motto “We Are the Revolution.” Let him represent the contingent that comes across as too pompous to elicit much rapport.

Other artists, as if conscious of the dangers of overdoing it, take refuge in self-effacement. Helmut Newton turns his back to the camera. Self-parody is another tactic. Fred C. Archer fuses his face with his equipment.

As in any other endeavor, getting all the expressive shadings exactly right is a rare thing. Lee Friedlander did it with wonderful wit in a street shot where he is nothing but a shadow on a woman’s back. Martin Kersels’ “Tossing a Friend (Melinda)” is a joyously spontaneous color triptych. In it the hefty artist seems to be both throwing and catching a delicate girl in midair. Lucas Samaras manipulated a tiny Polaroid into a realm of imagination where he hides from a stalking female monster.

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“Vintage Photo Works by Dennis Oppenheim” is one of two accompanying exhibitions. It presents four, big projects by a mixed-bag veteran of conceptual art who’s done everything from earthworks to performances.

“Stills From Gingerbread Man” consists of enlargements from an 8-millimeter movie finished in 1971. The first panel shows the artist as a cuddly hippie ingesting the aforementioned cookie. Subsequent X-ray panels trace the dough through Oppenheim’s digestive tract. An explanatory text informs us that the “residue (waste products) become the finished work.”

For Oppenheim, this is a fairly straightforward gag. More typical is his 1968 “Boundary Split,” where a piling-up of ideas and documentation almost swamps the point. Here, a map, blueprint and site photos record him literally cutting the shape of the U.S.-Canadian border from the ice on the frozen St. John River.

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If Oppenheim is about intellectual atmospherics, the remaining show is about unbelievable precision. “Harold E. Edgerton’s Stroboscopic Photographs” consists of 28 prints tracing the work of a pioneer in stop-action photography. Many of these images are so familiar they’ve become cliched in the positive sense--unforgettable because they are.

Edgerton, who died in 1990, was trained as an electrical engineer. His development of the intense, chattering bursts of light that make stroboscopic pictures possible was a scientific achievement that led to poetic results.

A shot of a handsome athlete raising his arms gives him the wings of an angel. “Atomic Bomb Explosion Before 1952” makes the blast look like a graphic design bursting from a real tower in the desert. It’s only comprehensible as a picture of pure energy.

“30 Caliber Bullet Piercing an Apple” seems ordinary today until we remind ourselves of the unexpected qualities of the picture. The broken skin of the apple at both ends is extremely neat and decorative. Frozen in the fraction of a split second, the action is remarkably balanced and serene. Edgerton’s famous shot of a bullet hitting a Jack of Diamonds has the corny-joke title “Cutting the Card Quickly.” The joke’s on us when we take the stop action for granted and start wondering what dead-eye marksman managed to hit the card on its edge.

* Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., to Oct. 13, closed Wednesday, (213) 857-6000.