UNTITLED

If you’ve grown up around Hollywood, it’s easy to feign indifference to production stills -- meaning all those banal images taken by unit photographers during the production of a commercial film. After all, you’ve probably seen them decorating the walls of your dry cleaners or under glass in tourist shops along Hollywood boulevard.

But as a genre they do have an interesting history, and in the early years they were often composed with 8-by-10 negatives and printed in limited editions (as little as three). As a result, collectors and museums alike are starting to take notice. “These photographers are finally getting recognized for the artists that they were,” says Santa Barbara Museum of Art curator of photography Karen Sinsheimer.

That’s partly why she helped to curate “Made in Hollywood” (sbma.net; ends Oct. 5), which features more than 90 gelatin-silver prints from the collection of John Kobal, one of the first to recognize their artistic value.

Some indulge in outright fantasy (as in George Hurrell’s gorgeous portraits), while others use heavy-handed stage techniques and symbolism to create truly odd scenes of wonder. But as Sinsheimer points out, “that’s because they were made in an era when the studios controlled everything. . . . So there was always an emphasis on artifice.”

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-- theguide@latimes.com