The great August Sander exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed last month, but his influence can be seen in many shows currently up in Chelsea. Jona Frank is one photographer inspired by Sander’s “People of the Twentieth Century.” Her “High School” at Foley Gallery uses a standard format to portray middle-class students in suburban California, New Jersey, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. The pictures are 24-by-20- or 40-by-30-inch chromogenic prints, mostly full-length with the subject in an appropriate setting. “Brad, Football, WI” (1999) shows the hefty boy in his shoulder pads in the locker room; pretty blonde “Jennifer, Cheerleader, NJ” (1999) is in her red, white, and blue outfit on a basketball court; and soulful “Leslie, Artist, NJ” (1999) holds her sketchbook and wears black.

Ms. Frank’s 26 pictures are nicely done, although the students as individuals and types seem somewhat familiar. It’s as if the country went from the 1950s to the aughts with little in between (not necessarily a bad thing, from my prospective). Her teens leave one less fearful of the future than the eight punksters in the photographs by Bradley Mc-Callum and Jacqueline Tarry in their “Endurance” exhibition at Marvelli Gallery. These large, 50-by-40-inch C-prints are another variation on Sander’s concept of pictures in a series, unified by format and subject category, in which each instance gains importance because of its differences.

“Billy” (2003) like the rest, is shot against a black backdrop that provides none of the context we get from Sander’s settings. Since much of what Billy wears is black, his face and the patches (“I’M A TOYS ‘R US KID!”) sewn on his clothes stand out. His pudgy face is essentially characterless, and the multiple piercings and hardware attached to it don’t help. I expect Mr. McCallum and Ms. Tarry mean to elicit sympathetic understanding for these children floating in their black voids, but I have more feeling for the unseen parents and adult caretakers who have to deal with them.

On the other hand, I’m quite curious about the seven children in the six photographs in the second exhibition at Marvelli, Ingar Krauss’s “In a Russian Juvenile Prison.” The German photographer has used a very somber, flat, gold-toned black-and-white format to present his young prisoners. The light gray background gives us no information, and the simple prison uniforms tell us little. Why are they in prison? The four boys and three girls don’t look so bad. (I remember seeing a project of prisoners on Death Row in a Texas maximum-security prison: they looked bad.) The children have an aura, if not exactly of innocence, then of deep uncertainty about themselves and the dreadful place they find themselves in. As with Sander’s work, we imagine narratives about their lives, the lives they’ve lived and the lives that still might be possible for them.

Stephen Sack’s exhibition “The Metal Mirror” at Ariel Meyerowitz Gallery is pictures of ancient coins – corroded, worn, altered by time and nature, and enlarged enormously to show their beauty and decay. Mr. Sack’s large C-prints take advantage of photographic technological to discover details not available to the naked eye. It is an extreme form of travel, both temporal and spatial.

Alert! I spotted the first upscale shmattes boutique in amongst the galleries. Will Chelsea get malled like Soho as haute couture chases culture for the big bucks?

“Jona Frank: High School” until November 27 (547 W. 27th Street, 5th floor, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-244-9081). Prices: $1,200-$3,000.

“Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry: Endurance” and “Ingar Krauss: In a Russian Juvenile Prison” until November 20 (526 W. 26th Street, 2nd floor, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, 212-627-3363). Prices: $1,500-$5,000 and $4,800.

“Stephen Sack: The Metal Mirror” until October 30 (120 Eleventh Avenue, between 20th and 21st Streets, 212-414-2770). Prices: $3,500-$6,500.