People who need people

If the pristine Audis and BMWs whipping by on the West Peachtree autobahn are any indication, Galerie MC is sitting on some juicy real estate.

Marscha Cavaliere, who opened her eponymous gallery in October, is a former Delta flight attendant-turned-real estate agent-turned-gallery owner. Her bi-level MidCity Loft apartment incorporates living quarters upstairs and the street level Galerie MC downstairs.

Cavaliere is acutely aware of the mad cash currently putting down roots in this nexus of high-end bars and restaurants. She gears her sleek, airy Met Home photography gallery — with its exposed granite wall and bountiful windows — toward the neo-yupsters less concerned with photographic pedigree than something interesting to anchor their copious wall space.

Emerging artists in the $400-$3,000 range seem to be a gallery specialty. And in a city where great, edgy work can be easily found by skimming the cream from local universities, Cavaliere proves far more astute than many established gallery owners. She features a fair number of student photographers in her most recent show, The Human Element. Cavaliere concedes, “My goal is not really to sell the masters. I find it much more intriguing to see things that you haven’t seen before.” And The Human Element certainly profits from the large portion of photographers not yet on the Atlanta photography radar.

The Human Element is a mix of Atlanta and national artists. Obvious references to the human are coupled with more oblique ones, which show that Cavaliere is not all about the retail-directed bottom line. She also has a more creative metaphorical imagination. The show is filled with some expected allusions to the human, from Sarah Ianacone’s fairly traditional nudes to Paul McPherson’s Leibowitz-slick image of two doppelganger lesbians locked in an embrace.

Far more rewarding than such literal interpretations of the human are works like David Diodate’s tiny, distressed images of a tombstone overgrown with flowers or a bench awaiting human occupation. Equally poignant — and ironic for leaving the human figure out of the equation — are Jerry Siegel’s rectangular color images of ramshackle country dwellings, where a line of clothes hung out to dry may be the only indication of a human presence. Instead, it is these dwellings, with their rusted-out roofs and resilience despite the obvious assaults of time and the elements, which make them interesting stand-ins for their occupants.

Some of the most tantalizing work has unfortunately been reduced to a single image, when other less interesting bodies of work are given more representation. It is a pity that there is just one piece by Art Institute of Atlanta student Ashlei Thomas, for example. Thomas’ provocative black-and-white image “Woman with a Gun” features that provocatively phallic object held at crotch level. That scary “don’t go there” warning is book-ended by two ironically “welcoming” tattoos, drawing the viewer’s attention to the heart of the matter.

Christine Callahan’s “Wedding Table, California” offers another single work, one of the most intriguing images in the show. But surely a photographer with such a shrewd perspective could have been better represented? In an image bathed in mild, white California sunlight, an older couple shares a table with a small brown-skinned girl whose white dress and fancy tiara signal her wedding party status. But placed beside an elegantly dressed older woman, there is a charming continuum of femininity, from the budding to the ripened. The smile on the older woman’s lips as she listens to the little girl speak also captures the serendipitous pleasures of such assigned seating situations, and the unexpected, delightful aspects of the American experience, of disparate people thrown together.

Callahan’s delicate touch nevertheless captures something of our relationships to each other and the world. Though The Human Element manages to be both all-encompassing and vague, its insights into humanity are there if you look. They just tend to occur in the margins, as trace elements and fragments of truth, like the streaks of car taillights and headlights left snaking through otherwise deserted city streets in Marilyn Suriani’s “Arles I, France.”