The arrangement of portraits in the exhibit provides a study in approaches to the genre. James Mitchell's metaphoric portrait of clothes dancing on a line, Untitled (1978) contrasts with Roger Minick's kitschy Mother and Daughter and K-Mart (1977). Robert Mapplethorpe's Patti Smith (Sitting) (1976), with its gaunt singer in a man's wrinkled shirt, counterpoints Judy Dater's baroque Kathleen Kelly (1972) of a languid woman festooned with rings, necklaces and scarves; in both, the studied vacancy of the subject's eyes reveals something of the nature of the formal portrait ritual.

In many of Austin's acquisitions, the roots of photographic concerns peculiar to Seventies West-Coast practice can be seen. Ingeborg Gerdes' photograph of a sensual male torso in white shirt and slightly unzipped trousers, Hong Kong (1977), and Abigail Perlmutter's of a pensive young boy, Irwin/Miami, Summer 1976, are both rendered in the grainy, light-struck style that later became almost endemic in places such as the San Francisco Art Institute. Steve Fitch's Electrogliph Series (1977-78), represented here by three prints, may well be the seminal exploration of this type of night-photograph iconography -- arrows and other signs in neon and garish colors, and long, hand-held exposures. David Maclay's painterly manipulations in Bolinas Nursery (1978) and North Beach Condo (1980) and John Divola's architectural trashing in Zuma No. 3 (1977) are diverse expressions of the bricolage characteristic of whole schools of California art.

Often it is possible to trace not only thematic threads but the evolution of individual photographic styles as well. Maclay's surface markings of 1980 are replaced by found graphics in the Bauhaus-derived, pink-and-blue floor of Karen's Room (1981). The darkroom manipulations in Michael Beard's sepia landscapes give way to a quirky humor in his Untitled (1978), a Cibachrome in which a cast of tiny, appliquŽd comic-book heroes emerges from garbage cans. The Vogue-ish eroticism of Craig Morey's untitled scenarios of 1977-79, in which characters are seen only from shoulder to knee, is supplanted by the performance-like staging of Untitled (1980), which features two women whose stylized caresses are glimpsed behind blue and green wrapping papers.

The dominant esthetic in Austin's collections is a self-contained and self-reflexive formalism: these are not, by and large, images which deal with an external real world. The exceptions in the collection are significant; though visual seductive, they still succeed in pressing the issue of content through their formal surfaces. Catherine Wagner's Arch Construction III (1980) describes the building of Moscone Center in gestures of reinforcing bars on acres of cold concrete; the absence of human beings and the inhuman scale of the project imply that people aren't especially relevant here. Janet Delaney's "portraits" of rooms compile a wealth of meticulously seen Balzacian details which supply the essence of the absent occupant -- iron pumpers in Men's Weight-Lifting Room YMCA (1979), or the casually untidy woman in My Sister's Bedroom (1979).

Theresa Weedy's Cholla Power Plant, near Interstate 80, Arizona (1981), pictures a mist-shrouded sci-fi fairyland glittering with pink and turquoise lights on towers and tanks. There is a potent ambiguity here that epitomizes the American romance with technology -- which could destroy us all, almost incidentally. Weedy's title for the entire work, The Military Industrial Series, grounds the scene in its potentially destructive function. The taut edge of the photograph is complemented by its placement beside Greg MacGregor's Anza Borrego Object No. 2 (1978), which pictures a wrecked and unidentifiable hull -- it might be part of a UFO or some bit of post-nuclear-disaster refuse left on the desert.

Austin's collection is by no means mature, and it need not be. It contains relatively few images of renown. It does represent a serious and enthusiastic involvement with photography and with what is uniquely Californian in contemporary image-making. It provides a fascinating clue as to how a collector looks at what we do.

Illustrations that appeared with this review:

Figure 1: Janet Delaney, Untitled (1979). 16"x20" Ektagraphic prints, at the Falkirk Community Cultural Center, San Rafael. ©1979 Janet Delaney.

Figure 2: Theresa Weedy, Cholla Power Plant, near Interstate Highway 40, Arizona. Ektacolor print, 16"x20", at the Falkirk Community Cultural Center, San Rafael. ©1981 Theresa Weedy.