On the edge of old downtown's waterfall, our city's artists share space with Rochester's preserved history. The Center at High Falls offers a look into Rochester's past, while also providing a gallery dedicated entirely to showing the work of local artists.

The current exhibit in the beautifully lit upstairs gallery is a group photography show, which features 96 artists, each of whom contributed one to three pieces. This type of show might make the high-brow set squirm - because the gallery is truly dedicated to promoting local artists, anyone who entered was guaranteed at least one piece in the exhibit. The value is that many artists who are not yet represented gain exposure, while museum-goers get that swell of hometown pride as they view the wealth of creative talent in our little city. The large number of photographers also ensures something for everyone, as an extreme range of style, technique, genre, and subject matter, are included. The one pitfall is that the volume of work can be distracting, and many of the more interesting photos are tucked away around corners and across from the coat rack. Setting my ambivalence aside, I must admit that fans of the manic-ly jumbled wonderland that is Artisan Works will break no sweat in maneuvering this show.

Though the photos that attracted me the most varied intensely from one another, a few of them had the common theme of referencing historical artwork. K. Iuppa's "Death of Venus" is a wall-sized digital work, featuring a voluptuous nude floating on an empty body of water, toes pointing toward the distant horizon, palms resting gently parallel to an indifferent sky. The work is lovely and bare and archetypal; it dually references the Venus of Willendorf in the figure's mother-goddess bulk, and also Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus," in which the newborn deity is pictured sailing out of the tide. Also making an historical reference is Susan Fredericks Hodes' "Mona Lisa Under Glass," which pictures a young black woman, framed by the window of the car in which she sits. Overlaying her faint, classic smile is the colorful reflection of autumn trees on the glass, perhaps the object of her calm reverie.

Amid the local landmark photos are some atypical and beautiful pieces, including Michael J. Murdoch's dreamy pinhole pics of Highland Park and the Genesee River. "Starry Nites," a photo by JFK/AJVK, cleverly depicts wet pavements and familiar outdoor seating in dusky monochrome. Sheridan Vincent's interesting use of perspective in "Wings at Dusk" makes the Strong National Museum of Play's butterfly garden seem like an oddly inviting spaceship - the warm interior of the greenhouse and its space-age shapes seem out of place set against the cool-toned and faded city buildings.

The big city of New York is peacefully present in two black-and-white photos that focus on the stillness hiding amid the rush we expect to see. Sharon Turner's "Yoga in Times Square" contrasts that crazy corner with inner pause, and Thomas Schaeffer plays with definition in "Canyon," which depicts a man standing on a curb, towered over by walls that extend beyond the upper picture plane.

Amidst a grouping of foreign-land photos of Chinese and Italian architecture is Ronald Gouger's "Heading Home," a rural study of gorgeous contrast and tranquil nostalgia: the open sky is completely awash in fiery golden light, and rests heavily atop a stretch of white winter ground and dark woods, toward which a tiny figure pulling a sled ambles.

I also enjoyed that imaginative artist Kay Vergo invites us to find images in the shapes on the rusty surface of the digital abstract "Cat, Man and a Pachyderm." Equally playful, Bonk Johnston's world of miniatures comes to whimsical life in two carnival booth vignettes, "Proud of His Wares" and "Barrel of a Gun." The exhibit of varied styles and concerns among Rochester artists opened my eyes not only to the diversity in our home-grown art, but to my own interest in a mixed assortment of photographic genres.

Also on exhibit at High Falls is Jake Adams' solo exhibit, "The Man and Object." At the age when most artists were doing clichéd still lives and nervous self portraits, Webster Schroeder High School senior Adams is tackling mature subject matter with attention to depth, dichotomy, and nuance. Unmistakably influenced by the surrealists de Chirico and Dali (Adams even includes an impressively accurate study of Dali's "Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man"), the artist offers a not only fearless, but urgent, examination of the tension of the inner world and outer life, and all of the complications therein.

Two of his most interesting oils and collages are the seeking "She is Land, He is Sky," and the quietly apocalyptic "Safer," in which the artist sits, triple gas-masked under a troubled sky, his back turned on an ominous group that limply marches up a flight of stairs nearby. His use of highly contrasted lighting and continuous (melting, morphing, peeling, floating, running) action adds up to dramatic dreamscapes that speak to the isolation and anxiety of a developing identity in a sick, strange world. Keep an eye out for this kid. 

A Photographer's Path 11/The Man and Object

Through April 27

The Center at High Falls, 60 Browns Race

325-2030, centerathighfalls.org

Wednesday-Friday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday noon-6 p.m., Sunday 1-5 p.m.