The director of the International Center of Photography, Willis Hartshorn, said at the press preview for “Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography” that the pictures on display were “not the view of outsiders, but insiders.” While it is true that the pictures were taken by African photographers and the subjects are African, the exemplars for much – maybe most – of the work in the exhibition are more likely found to be in the art schools, museums, and art journals of London, Paris, and New York than in the indigenous cultures of the participants.

This was true of “Between Past and Future: New Photographs and Video From China,” the mammoth exhibition hosted by ICP and the Asia Society two years ago, and true as well of last year’s “Nazar: Photographs From the Arab World” at Aperture. Photography is a Western technology, and it is near-impossible for those who practice it to avoid adopting a Western perspective when they shoot. A few Japanese have succeeded, but they come from a very sophisticated visual culture with a long tradition of native art criticism.

As the curator of “Snap Judgments,” Okwui Enwezor, pointed out, America itself is a post-colonial country. For more than a century after achieving independence,Americans who wanted to become proficient painters or sculptors went to Europe to study, so it is not surprising that African photographers have a similar relationship with the art of their former colonizers. For better and for worse, they have learned well.

Guy Tillim, born in 1962 in Johannesburg, is represented by 16 powerful images from his documentary series “Jo’burg.” These pigment prints of medium size, all taken in 2004, are in the tradition of investigative photojournalism and examine the after-effects of apartheid.They limn the mean life of impoverished blacks tucked away in the recesses of this modern, high-rise city.

In the foreground of “Ntokozo and His Brother Vusi Tshabalala at Ntokozo’s Place, Milton Court, Pritchard Street, Johannesburg” are the heads and shoulders of four young black men, three obscured by shadow and/or blur, and one startlingly sharp. This intense man is talking, and the front pages of a tabloid newspaper, the Star, plastered over the wall behind him, seem to inform what he is saying: “Fury Over Hijack Hoax,” “Chiefs in the Dark as Star Vanishes,” “Suspect Saved From Necklace” (a necklace is a tire put around the victim and set afire), “Do Women Need Viagra?” But part of the picture’s drama lies in the ambiguous relationship between the dominant figure and the texts.

Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, born in 1977 in Cape Town, works in a more programmatic documentary format. Each of the five 8-inch-by-12-inch pigment prints from her 2004 “Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder” project presents one or two style-conscious young blacks in an outdoor setting showing off his or her clothes.

Simplicity is the strength of these images. “Nonkululeko” is an adolescent male posed in front of a brick wall wearing yellow, black, and red plaid pants; a tight shirt with a big, green paisley pattern; a red cap with earflaps; and huge red shades. “Thato J” stands in the street in his chrome-yellow pants and intricately designed green and red sweater. “Cindy and Nkuli” stand a bit self-consciously before a brick factory wall, one in a bright-orange dress and bright-red stockings, the other in a short canary-yellow dress and black stockings with a white pattern of witches flying on brooms. None of this is exactly native garb, but many of the colorful fabrics we associate with Africa were originally manufactured in Europe, so it is a question of each generation taking what it will.

The pitiless conflict in Algeria between its brutal socialist government and the brutal fundamentalist Muslim opposition is the background of the deeply humane black-and-white portraits by Omar D. (Daoud), born in 1951 in Annaba. Mr. Daoud trained as an ophthalmologist, and there is a special emphasis in his pictures on the subjects’ eyes. In one of the untitled pictures, a man has no eyes: The lids are drawn in over the sockets in a way that is painful to look at. An old man glowers derisively at the photographer with piercing eyes. An old woman in a white robe has her eyes shut tight as if she has seen all she wants to see. A young girl, an early teenager, is held by an old man and faces the camera with bright, inquiring eyes, trying not to be afraid.

Kay Hassan (born in 1956 in Johannesburg), on the other hand, uses contemporary artistic tropes to little effect. “Negatives 1-6” (2006) consists of three collages made with Polaroid backings gleaned from itinerant photographers who took the identity photographs used to enforce apartheid. These are not particularly attractive pastiches, and only the wall text connects them to apartheid – after all, similar Polaroid backings were generated when I had my picture taken for my senior-citizen MetroCard. “Negatives” (2006), four large chromogenic prints, are based on the Warholian premise that iteration redeems banality; I think not.

The kitschy blasphemy of the four large prints from Tracey Rose’s”Lucie’s Fur Version 1:1:1″ (2003-04) would be ho-hummed in Chelsea. Here Ms. Rose portrays Adam and Eve as young, homosexual Zulu men, and the Messiah is a black woman in leopard-print underwear on a floating carpet. Born in 1974 in Durban, Ms. Rose is technically proficient, but spiritually vapid. There are plenty enough criticisms to be made of Christianity, but I expect even Bishop Desmond Tutu would consider this artsy silliness not worthy of remark. Let her exhibit pictures treating Muhammad with the same contempt, and we’ll talk about her daring.

Works from Randa Shaath’s 2002-03 “Rooftops of Cairo” series were included in the “Nazar” exhibition, and it is a treat to see it again. Ms. Shaath was born in 1963 in Philadelphia, but she lives and works in Cairo; these blackand-white pictures are evidence of her immersion in the day-to-day getting-by of her fellow Cairenes. The photographs by Zohra Bensemra (b. 1968, Algeria), Ali Chraibi (b. 1965, Marrakech), and Moshekwa Langa (b. 1975, Bakenberg, South Africa) provide further glimpses of Africans grappling with this exogenous technology, mastering it for their own ends.

Until May 28 (1133 Sixth Avenue at 43rd Street, 212-857-0000).