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A woman holds a glass of rosé in one hand and a baby rooster in the other. A man in a suit sits casually next to a woman on a tanning bed. A dog is being wrestled? Strangled? As in Diane Arbus's work, something is usually on the uncanny side in Mermelstein's photographs. Marvin Heiferman, an independent curator of photography, writes in his introduction how "in this performative universe, regardless of which role they choose to play, Mermelstein's subjects share a curious mixture of expectation and disengagement." In nearly 100 full-color, candid shots, subjects are not quite passive, not quite active and usually at the mercy of horrifyingly banal contradictions in American daily rituals. For Mermelstein (SideWalk), they hit their apotheosis in people's interactions with and appropriations of animals: at a fair, a turtle has been left balanced, limbs flailing, atop an upside down Styrofoam cup; a chimp faces the camera affably while effortlessly blending in among young denizens (including a baby) at a bar mitzvah table; a woman in a Playboy bunny costume waits on line at a convenience store. The tension—particularly in the shots honing in on the inconsistancies or inadaquacies of race or religion as ways of thinking about people—can be startling, especially given Mermelstein's luridly unforgiving flash work and the long, horizontal format here, with each image framed in white and uninterrupted by text (captions are provided at the back). Mermelstein's work, collected at the Art Institute of Chicago and elsewhere, shows that the photographic phantasmagorias of Gregory Crewdson and others have nothing on real life. (June)