After having concentrated primarily on luxurious views of interiors from previous eras—metaphors for man’s desire to domesticate everything, to stylize everything—Seton Smith presented a series of photographed objects that was as “enigmatic,” as the earlier work, but more abstract, more fluid. Taken from the collections of the Field Museum in Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Smith gave these objects a fluid identity—one no longer freighted with the weight of culture.

These objects seem like orphans, as if they had no history. Their origin no longer matters: they inhabit the interior

Refugees: the nomads of the nation-state. They number over 20 million; another 25 million are simply labeled “displaced persons” because their flight has not taken them across an international border. Since 1987, Belgian photojournalist John Vink has been following groups of them—the identifications are cumbersome because by definition these are people from one place who have gone someplace else—Guatemalans in Mexico, Bulgarians in Turkey, Cambodians and Burmese in Thailand, Kurds in Iraq, Mozambicans in Malawi, Romanians in Hungary, as well as DPs in the Sudan, ex-Yugoslavia, and Angola. Most