Nicholas Knight. Taking Pictures (Wheat Field with Cypresses), 2008; archival pigment print mounted on aluminum.

Both artists currently on view at Steven Wolf Fine Arts address the way the medium of photography mediates our experience of that which is photographed. For "Taking Pictures" Nicholas Knight has photographed artworks in galleries and museums all over the world, as seen through the viewfinders of the digital cameras and cell phones of visitors, often with the out-of-focus original in the background. Knight's real subject is not the works of art, but the way technology has come to dominate our perception of art, and indeed the world around us. Interaction with the screen has replaced direct interaction with works of art. Instead of the varied and grand array of museum-goers pictured in Thomas Struth's Museum Photos series, Knight's images reflect a contemporary standardization and leveling of sublime experience. A video depicting Knight mechanically projecting a slide show of the series heightens this sensation. Thoughtfully, Knight has captured the hands and backs of the heads of many of the photographers, creating an intimate double portrait, and reflecting the access that technology grants, even if that access comes at the expense of unmediated experience.

For over 20 years, Jo Babcock has been making pinhole cameras from found materials: offering new life to coffee cans, snuff boxes, toys, and more. Babcock makes reference to their original functions, however, through the subjects they photograph, giving them a sense of agency. For example, a band-aid box camera produced a self-portrait of the injured artist. He thereby provides a conceptual link between the camera as object and the photograph it captures. In "Past Life Picturesque," a great selection of pinhole cameras is on display in a large vitrine as well as stacked atop the walls, as if trying to escape. Unfortunately none of the photographs taken with the individual cameras are included, telling only half their story. As a parallel to these quirky and whimsical objects, Babcock has mounted three peepholes on the wall, which thwart the viewers' voyeurism with an angry red light, a ticking clock and other symbols of our apocalyptic anxiety.

"Nicholas Knight: Taking Pictures" and "Jo Babcock: Past Life Picturesque" are on view at Steven Wolf Fine Arts in San Francisco through October 10, 2009.