A WIDE-ANGLE VIEW PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT LOOKS AT JEWS IN AMERICA.

Byline: Steven Rosen Correspondent

As America changes, its Jewish population becomes more multicultural and less stereotypically white middle-class and urban. In addition, sometimes the community support systems upon which many Americans depend renders ethnicity and religion unimportant. But other times, religion becomes everything for recent immigrants.

To explore these ideas, the Jewish Museum of New York commissioned 13 international artists from varied backgrounds to create 10 photography-based installations about contemporary American Judaism.

The resultant "The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography" is at the Skirball Cultural Center now through Sept. 3. It is divided into three sections: "Who Is a Jew?" "What Is Community?" and "Where Is Home?"

"The photographs are about how American society is so multidimensional in the 21st century it's almost irrelevant, your heritage," said Lori Starr, senior vice president of the Skirball and director of its museum. "It's more about the good deeds you do in your life. So it's a very optimistic exhibition."

To that end, the show starts with some monumental color portraits of 21st Century contemporary Jewish youth by Dawoud Bey, a Chicago-based African-American photographer. These teens, who look intently at the camera as if they areprematurely wizened about their future, have Latino, Ethiopian and even Chippewa Indian backgrounds and features. How Samantha, Claire, Sahai, Zenebesh, and Jacob also became Jewish-American isn't the point so much as that they are. And they seem ready, in Bey's photos, to be proud about it and do good deeds.

Shortly after that introduction, the exhibit presents the impish work of New York-based South Korean contemporary artist Nikki S. Lee. Her take on Jewish identity serves as counterweight to Bey's direct, straightforward approach. Her "Parts" consists of a series of color prints randomly cropped and framed as if each is a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Her inclusion underscores the fact that the project is an art show, not solely one of photojournalism.

The downside of that is thatsometimes a contemporary artist's work is better in theory than actuality. Yoshua Okon's audiovisual installation, "Casting: Prototype for a Stereotype," bears that out.

The L.A.-based, Mexico-born artist used several women from San Diego's Spanish-speaking Jewish-immigrant community to act out the Book of Ruth in the desert. The film and soundtrack come off more like preening and screaming than anything profound. (I actually considered asking a guard to turn it down.)

There are other multimedia installations in the show that work much better. Los Angeles-based photographer Jessica Shokrian's six short videos provide artful glimpses into the adjustments to American life being made by her Iranian-Jewish family.

And in "Definition," panoramic video images are projected on two screens while visitors hear some 20 people discuss the meaning of the word "Jewish." Words that figure in their statements sometimes are projected on the floor. This work, a collaboration between Israeli-born Tirtza Even and Californian Brian Karl, who now lives in New York, makes the spoken word seem visual while not detracting from the meaning of what's being said.

Still, the traditional still photographs pack the most wallop and tell the best and most fascinating stories in "The Jewish Identity Project." Guatemala-born, New York-based Jaime Permuth's black-and-white photos chronicle the Bronx congregation of a Cuban-American rabbi, Rigoberto Emmanuel Vinas. Predominantly young and immigrant, this group sometimes shares space with an older and more affluent congregation in Yonkers, and the photos of the two joining together to celebrate a girl's bat mitzvah ceremony are moving.

In a different way, the show-ending large color prints by Boston-born Andrea Robbins and German-born Max Becher, who now split their time between the U.S. and Germany, elicit pleasure. Their "Brooklyn Abroad" series chronicles life in Postville, Iowa, for some Brooklyn Hasidic Jews who moved there to supervise a kosher meat-processing plant. There's dislocation to be sure, but one lovely image of a father and son fishing - both wearing yarmulkes - is right out of Mayberry.

But the star of the entire exhibit is Max. He's part of the "Prairie Jews" contribution from Chris Verene, a Brooklyn photographer who has been taking pictures of the residents of his hometown, Galesburg, Ill., for some 20 years.

The demure Max, at the age of 93, is featured in Verene's luxuriant color prints (with accompanying handwritten text) as he rides his exercise bike and holds his bright-yellow vacuum cleaner as his smiling housecleaner displays her broom. He came to Galesburg alone after surviving the Holocaust and operated an auto salvage yard. After his wife died, he lived alone, but had friends in the community, until his death in 2005 at age 94.

"My job is to bring an honest humanity to people's stories when telling them," Verene said by phone. "Max chronicled himself. He had newspapers dating back to the 1940s, and his identity was so evident in the things in his home and the way the house was.

"Max thought it was humorous to think of himself as a 'prairie Jew.' It was ironic in a way." Verene's touching remembrance of him is anything but that. It is a good deed done.

THE JEWISH IDENTITY PROJECT: NEW AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Where: Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 9 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday; through Sept. 3.

How much: $8 general, $6 seniors, free to members and children under 12. Free to full-time students on weekdays with valid ID.

Info: [phone], or visit www.skirball.org.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Max Becher, Postville, Iowa: ``Lawn Mowing,'' from the ``Brooklyn Abroad'' series, 2004-2005.

Courtesy of the artists and Sonnabend Gallery, New York

(2 -- color) Nikki S. Lee: ``The Wedding (5),'' from the ``Parts'' series, 2005.

Courtesy of Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects