art

Like many Americans, Tony Rocco once based his impression of Colombia on its media image. Films and television shows like Miami Vice portrayed it as a violent drug mecca, while others showed it as a dense, impassable jungle. In reality, it is a nation as complex as any other, with buzzing metropolises buttressed by rolling agrarian countryside, families, night clubs and sports teams. A visit to South America as a college student showed the Philadelphia photographer this other side to the much-maligned country, and he attempts to right its image in "The Faces of Colombia," showing at 3rd Street Gallery on 2nd through Jan. 30. Shot mostly between 2002 and 2005, the pictures deliver a mixture of rich color and soft black-and-white, capturing the tapestry of the country in a lively photojournalistic style. Caleño hones in on an exhausted soccer player in a brilliant green uniform, crouched to the ground and covered in sand. Warm sepia shots show children in pueblos and men asleep on farms. Most of Rocco's subjects seem aware of his presence. Some take the opportunity to mug for the camera, often looking silly or bewildered. Of the straight-on poses, only a few, such as the brightly colored juxtaposition of a butcher and his meat in Man with Sausages, resonate on a narrative and a visual level. However, Rocco shines in the candids, the shots of subjects standing afar or posing with an averted gaze. Here is where we see a cluster of children cozying up to a farm's barbed wire fence (Abuejero Kids) and a woman tenderly bottle-feeding a baby in soft sunlight. These shots hold such intimacy, such tender empathy, that if they could be seen on a wider scale, they'd go a long way to chipping away the stereotypes.

"True Faces of Colombia / Las Verdaderas Caras de Colombia," through Jan. 30, 3rd Street Gallery on 2nd, 58 N. Second St., 215-625-0993.