Galleries: Nuanced photographs of an aging father

Had you only read about the photographs from Philip Toledano's recently published book,

Days With My Father

(Chronicle Books), you might expect them to be uniformly depressing. Moreover, wouldn't a presentation of images of an elderly person with virtually no short-term memory be invasive and sad for everyone involved?

Well, as we are all often lucky or disappointed to discover, life is never that simple. Toledano has a poetic eye and an evident affection for his father, Edward, and his images - currently on exhibit at Gallery 339 - present a very nuanced, soulful portrait of the latter in the three years preceding his death at 99 in March 2009.

In fact, were it not for Philip Toledano's written commentaries accompanying his photographs, it would not be at all clear that his father was often confused. Next to a photo that catches Edward with an expression of mild amusement on his face, Philip explains that his father has again forgotten that his wife is dead, so Philip, as he often does, has made up a story about her whereabouts - in this case telling Edward she has joined the circus. In another picture, Edward is the provocateur he apparently always has been, showing off two strategically placed meringues on the front of his sweater.

The photographs in which Edward is not seen often constitute his son's most affecting work, as in images of notes Edward has left around his apartment. In Ambition, for example, a spiral-bound notebook lies open atop a radiator cover. In it, Edward has written, with some difficulty, "I want to think seriously about what I can accomplish with what's left of my life." You realize, studying two crossed-out words, that Toledano noticed that he had repeated the words to and seriously, and carefully scribbled over them.

There is only one photograph that seems to capture Edward's fear of his mental decline - revealed through the look of distress in his eyes when he confronts himself in a mirror - and it is a haunting image.

But, as with all of the individual photographs here, it is one element of a story that contributes to a larger, and profoundly humane, body of work.

Having only seen Henry Bermudez's colorful, sinuous paintings of mythological creatures in primordial jungle habitats, I was surprised at how easily his visions of a pre-Columbian paradise (or, in some cases, hell) translate to ink on paper in his show at Projects Gallery.

Apparently Bermudez, who lives in Philadelphia and is Venezuelan by birth (he represented his native country at the 1986 Venice Biennale), came across some early black-and-white ink drawings and decided to take up that medium again. The 13 works here mark his first revisitings, and they are all exquisite. You suspect that the pen, rather than the brush, may be his natural tool.

Rendered in crisp black and white, Bermudez's intricate patterns take on another character altogether. They are less obviously connected to naive painting, by virtue of being drawn and without color, but they also bring to mind the pristine delicacy of cut paper or lace patterns, as if he had decided to envision his mythical worlds through a colonial lens.

DesignPhiladelphia lives on in a few exhibitions this month, two that should not be missed and one that is still incomplete (as of this writing) but promising.

"Carte Blanche," an invitational show at the DuPont Corian Design Studio (2400 Market St., through Oct. 29), proves again that that old standard of group exhibitions - charge all the artists with the same theme or material and see what fascinating things they come up with - is as viable as ever.

In this case, DuPont Corian and the French design magazine Intramuros invited 25 designers to work their magic on the same A4 sheet of 6mm Corian Designer White. My particular favorite was Jonathan Olivares' sheet of Corian transformed into a stamped envelope, which he mailed Priority (to undisclosed destinations) without any protective packaging so it would acquire a patina of use. It did, and it's remarkable.

Anthony Tammaro's small upstairs show of slip-cast, unglazed porcelain vessel forms at Wexler Gallery (201 N. Third St., through Nov. 30) provides an intimate introduction to the artist's joinings of casts of ordinary objects, such as milk bottles. Think Jasper Johns, Giorgio Morandi, and twins, artistic and otherwise.

When I went to Skybox Studios last week, Aurora Robson's installation "be like water," organized by Eileen Tognini, was barely under way - a bevy of young people was sorting through plastic bottle parts of various colors - but some knowledge of her earlier pieces makes me think she'll make the most of this gymnasium-size room (2424 E. York St., through Nov. 7).