Like Hammer herself, the camerawork hungrily searches for meaningful connection. Framing is often tight and loose, cutting off a forehead or losing focus as it zooms in while a person speaks. The camera sees the way we might—or, rather, how Hammer does—noticing everything, getting ultra close so as not to miss any detail or quirk. The effect is neither graphic nor stylized. It’s just curious. Genuinely and omnivorously curious.

Accumulation, shifts in scale, and the content of the work itself orchestrate the energy of the exhibition experience. Wild bursts of movement both demonstrated and implied: David Black’s galloping horses, John Divola’s “Dogs Chasing My Cars in the Desert,” the eruptive potential of Takashi Homma’s Mount Fuji, and the tangling tongues and splayed legs of Thomas Ruff’s “Nudes.”

I held the slippery coils of celluloid up to the too-bright overhead light of my NYC apartment. I placed them against the screen of my desktop computer. I photographed the backlit negatives. And then I inverted those images in Photoshop. The results were imperfect and messy. Even the most prosaic shots seemed to hold meaning.

I took my Leica to the edge of the lake. The grass had grown out and was soft as a dog’s fur. The water was clear enough to see a turtle the size of a dinner plate languidly swimming below the surface. Ducks, geese, turtles, and the occasional swan. Bathing, swimming, dining, honking, parenting. Everyone going about their Friday-night business.