Franco Vimercati’s deceptively reductive recent photographs, created between 1996 and 1997, recall the early days of the medium. In this series of small-to medium-format images, quotidian objects appear on a dark ground. These subjects—a tin can, a carafe, and a glass—are at times perfectly limned, at other times out of focus, suggesting phantoms, or mere emanations of light. They are isolated, separated from any context, and obsessively rephotographed.

For more than twenty years, Vimercati has chosen to focus his attention on a single object or type of object at a time, presenting each in a