SACRAMENTO, CA.- Sometimes documentary, sometimes metaphorical, “Ourselves Through the Lens: Photography from the Ramer Collection” tells varied stories that span the poignant to the provocative. On view at the Crocker Art Museum from June 19 to Oct. 23, the exhibition examines our very human impulse to look, and the ways photography directs such visual encounters.

By training the camera on individual personalities and circumstances, photographers from James Van Der Zee to Graciela Iturbide and Luis González Palma have sought to capture the emotional lives of others. Street photographer Robert Frank measured himself against what he saw through the lens. In contrast, New York street photographer Leon Levinstein saw his camera as his tool for unmasking appearances. “Most people only see what they want to see. Whereas a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything,” he declared.

“Unique about this exhibition is how one collector’s profound interest in deciphering the mystery of other people’s lives and realities — as portrayed by photography — results in a host of stirring encounters,” says Diana L. Daniels, the exhibition’s curator. “All turn the overwhelming moments of life into a visual poetry that challenges us to look longer and go deeper. Within these many, varied approaches emerges a history of photography, especially over the 40-year period during which the medium gained prominence and developed a much wider appreciation.”

Among the contemporary photography selected for this exhibition are works by artists who are deliberately self-conscious about how they present their subjects. Artists Jona Frank and Jessamyn Lovell are acutely aware that what most interests them is often personal and private. Elena Dorfman’s “Rebecca I” presents an image in which a man embraces a fully dressed and highly lifelike doll. Unclear are his circumstances, but unmistakable is the loneliness he projects. Larry Sultan’s child submerged underwater, another unconventional subject, appears to be a seemingly inexplicable composition of face and limbs. Photographs from this series, "Swimmers" were inspired by Sultan’s discovery of Red Cross lifesaving manuals and swim classes for the blind.

Included in the many photographic approaches documented in this exhibition are prints by Arnold Genthe, Leonard Freed, Edward Steichen, Flor Garduño, Raúl Cañibano, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Shelby Lee Adams, Sebastião Selgado and Jennifer Karady. All are provocative and questioning of whether truth or artifice lies behind the portrayal.