Life is strange and inexplicable. Right in time for me to catch the Pedro Meyer retrospective at the George Eastman House, a close friend and I were discussing the mystery of personality and why individuals value the things they value. Why are some compelled to watch NASCAR/enamored of a particular shade of blue/prodded by a perpetual and insatiable wanderlust? We are products of our environments, sure, but you and I know it's more complicated and mysterious than that.

The other philosophical debate that keeps cropping up in my circle is: just what is going to happen with art and museums in this newfangled digital age? The limitless space online, the democratization of art (digital manipulation makes creating it in some ways easier; the internet means no mediator between artist and public is needed), the freedom...where does this leave the traditional and somewhat restrictive institutions of gallery, curator, and critic?

These two discussions dovetailed unexpectedly after my initial frustration with the Meyer exhibit waned. Let me explain.

Pedro Meyer's "Heresies" is an unconventional retrospective of nearly half a century of diverse photographic work. The Eastman House is one of 60 museums worldwide participating in the "Heresies" project, which simultaneously opened this past October. The exhibit also heralds his upcoming book, by the same title, which will include previously unpublished work.

The Eastman House website states that, "with the advent of digital photography in the early 1990's, Meyer evolved from a documentary photographer [...] into a digital-documentarian who often combines photographic elements from disparate times and places to arrive at a different or higher truth." The title of the show comes from the label he earned after making the claim that all photographs - whether "digitally manipulated or not - are equally ‘true' and ‘untrue,'" certainly an unpopular statement amongst the documentary photography community. Everyone has a motive, and image is the best rhetoric, because we believe that we can trust our eyes. The digitization of the image shook this faith.

The sparse exhibit, which includes a glossy Apple computer rapidly slideshowing Meyer's work, an informational plaque, and one large color photo, is meant to question and challenge the future role of museum-based photography exhibits in this here digital age. The Eastman House's site argues that "in an era of financial constraint and basic redefinition of the museum's role, Meyer's new... and heretical... paradigm for photography exhibits facilitates" worldwide networking between artists, museums, and patrons, as well as offers "compelling educational programs that appeal to the iPod generation."

But I'll admit it: I'm a control freak. I felt completely impotent without my tool (give me a mouse, touch-screen, anything!) with which to direct the pace of my viewing. Fingerprints marring the pristine screen provided evidence that I was not alone in my confused frustration. And apparently I'm uncomfortable if I'm not spoon fed. Initially thrown that no titles were included in the slide show, I then considered the fact that I frequently readily accept artists' decisions to leave their works untitled. I really wanted to spend some time with the images. Step 1: provoke the audience's curiosity with Meyer's compelling images. Step 2: give them a website (pedromeyer.com). OK, I'll play.

The site not only provides a free download of the entire 189-page book, but serves as a database for the words and reactions of others who have connected with the art. As fellow Mexican photographer Francisco Mata Rosas put it, "When a fixed image takes on movement before our eyes, when a photo reeks of blood, death, birth, the sensuality of skin; when we catch a whiff of the aromas of China or India, or when our senses are filled with the odors of the soil of Latin America, then we can hear what Meyer's figures have to say to us [...] He photographs to feel, to make others feel, to remember what we did not know, to feel what we did not recall." In studying even a portion of Meyer's enormous body of work, we incorporate into our own lives the countless mundane and fascinating moments of the anonymous lives that drew his eye.

Some of the images from the collection that I fixated upon include the juxtaposition of the exposed body of a nude woman with her silently confrontational, firm-wall eyes. Another depicted a child hugging the bubble form of an atomic bomb (presumably a model), oblivious to what it is. Meyer's enormous range literally leaves no subjects or subject matter undocumented, but never fails to make us immediately curious about his mysterious subjects.

"Saturn the Devourer," taken in Bangladesh, has a small child with an unfathomable expression and a sweat-glistening head digitally imposed over Rubens's painting of "Saturn Devouring His Son" (at home in the Prado, Madrid). In the painting, the god viciously rips at the chest of his son with his teeth. The real child placed in the foreground is deliberately vulnerable, and provokes a protective instinct from the audience. Each time I return to the site and consume more images, I tease out more of the pattern in the kinds of images that absorb me.

Serious kudos to the Eastman House for participating in this daring exhibit, which forces viewers to get out of the museum, and relegates the gallery to catalyst-only status. Meyer's book appropriately opens with "Uncertain Destiny," a dusky scene at a train terminal, where the shadowy ticket-taker is highlighted by a neon light flashing across his chest. We don't get to know why we are who we are, or where we are going. We just have to chase what makes sense to us as individuals, make decisions, and follow what makes us feel that this crazy mess of existing is meaningful. Beautiful, even.

Heresies

Pedro Meyer

Through January 25

George Eastman House, 900 East Ave

Tue-Sat 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu until 8 p.m., Sun 1-5 p.m.

$4-$10 | 271-3361, eastmanhouse.org