© Kelsey Bennet

Kelsey Bennet “Hypnagogia” at Christopher Henry Gallery 127 Elizabeth street, 6-9pm

Contemporary daydreams, Bennett’s narrative constructions combine a strong sense of color with an eye for the graphical gesture. Her characters, variations on autobiography, peer out at the viewer from within the cathedrals of their private illusions like children caught at an ambivalent game. Archetypes of the everyday, Bennett’s subjects seem to hover in a liminal world poised between reality and fantasy. Her photos vibrate with a subversive formality reminiscent of Cindy Sherman ‘s film stills or William Eggleston’s documents of Americana.

© Yola Monakhov

Yola Monakhov “Photography After Dante” Sasha Wolf Gallery, 10 Leonard Street, 6-8 pm

For this body of work, Monakhov used Dante’s Divine Comedy as a source and framework for creating photographs in contemporary Italy. Her approach intended to bring together a canonical text and contemporary life, using the poem to investigate conventions of the photographic medium.

© Alex Prager

Alex Prager “Week-end” at Yancey Richardson Gallery 535 W 22 street, floor 3, 6-8pm

Focusing on female archetypes - ranging from the temptress to the tempted – Prager manufactures meticulously staged shots of women both disguised and exposed – using synthetic wigs, heavy make-up and polyester costumes to capture, as she puts it, ‘women on the edge.’

© Michael Kenna

Michael Kenna “Venezia” at Robert Mann Gallery 210 11 avenue, b/w 24 & 25 street, floor 10, 6-8pm

Michael Kenna’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery, Venezia, marks the premiere presentation of Kenna’s photographs of Venice, Italy. The exhibition coincides with the publication of Michael Kenna: Venezia, available March 2010 from Nazraeli Press. With photographs spanning nearly 30 years, the exhibition reflects the quintessentially patient, quiet method of looking for which Kenna has become legendary.

© Jacob Aue Sobol

Jacob Aue Sobol “Sabine and I, Tokyo” at Yossi Milo Gallery 525 W 25 street, 6-8pm

Jacob Aue Sobol’s series Sabine (1999-2001) chronicles three years the artist spent in the settlement of Tiniteqilaaq in Greenland, his life as a fisherman and hunter, and his intimate relationship with Sabine and her family. The series of black-and-white photographs is a visual diary of a love story and daily survival, capturing private moments with Sabine contrasted with the harsh arctic environment of the east Greenlandic coast.

© Denis Darzacq

Denis Darzacq “Hyper” at Laurence Miller Gallery 20 W 57 street, floor 3, 6-8pm

HYPER refers to the new garish supermarkets in Paris and Rouen where consumer goods, brightly packaged and presented, make for a vivid and contemporary backdrop for his pictures. Darzacq brings street dancers, mostly young men and women in their late teens and early twenties into these stores and asks them to perform their leaps, jumps, twirls, and other gravity-defying movements.