In photographs made at western rodeos, Susan Felter displays a sure instinct for the mythic and erotic overtones of this American ritual. She photographs surface illusion, straight-faced macho cowboys in pink satin shirts and two toned leather chaps, and the kinetic colors and shapes of bronco riding. Her vision is in harmony with both the cowboys, who desire to project a ruggedly virile image, and the rodeo entrepreneurs, who fabricate spectacles.

The photographs are divided almost evenly between portraits, some of them posed, others frozen with strobe in mid-action, and movement studies, abstract

Suzanne Hellmuth’s and Jock Reynolds’ recent exhibition, “A State of the Union: Photographic Juxtapositions,” evidences a multiplicity of unrealized possibilities. Enticed by the 200,000 photographs in the century-old archive of the California Historical Society, the artists began selecting pictures which through visual linkage, juxtaposition, and fragmentation could “address the issues and the nature of human events in this period of expansion and industrialization in California.” Conceived as an installation, the photographs were sequenced in units of two or more, re-photographed, framed, and