The Robert Mann Gallery has “Epilogues” up as its summer show, featuring work done by five of the gallery’s artists since their last solos. The five — Gail Albert Halaban, Laurent Millet, Jeff Brouws, Mary Mattingly, and res — are fairly representative of many of the currents in contemporary photography. All five of them work in color. All their prints are large (unless you except a work by Mr. Brouws that includes 24 7-inch-by-7-inch prints mounted together on one mat), and some are very large. For instance, Ms. Halaban’s “Untitled (framed porch)” (2006) is 40 inches by 54 inches.

Four of Ms. Halaban’s five pictures continue her “This Stage of Motherhood” series: images of infants and mothers — wealthy, ambitious moms — in upscale digs. In “Untitled (crib)” (2007) and “Untitled (crawling)” (2006), the babies face the camera, but their mothers are faceless. The picture frame has decapitated them, although we see their very expensive outfits, and the modern, antiseptically clean rooms they have provided for their little ones. The even lighting Ms. Halaban uses contributes to the sense of emotional flatness.

Mr. Millet’s seven photographs are from his “Grand Village” (2006) project. These studio works are deliberately out-of-focus pictures of miniature structures made of red, yellow, blue, and white glass panels. They look like slightly fuzzy, abstract, three-dimensional houses by Piet Mondrian. Mr. Brouws’s four photographs, on the other hand, are intensely real investigations of the detritus in actual American landscapes. The 24 small pictures noted above make up “Signs Without Signification Portfolio” (2003–2007); they are all electrical signs gone kaput, most of them now simply frames bereft of their plastic sign faces, messengers with no messages.

Mr. Brouws’s most dramatic work is “Car in Landscape, Montana” (2004), a 43-inch-by-51.5-inch rear shot of a lone, junked car in an extensive prairie. The car has somehow ended up canted, almost on its side, so there is a surreal aspect to the image. The colors here are very attractive; the fresh greens of the finely detailed grass, the blues of the sky and its impressive array of clouds, and especially the lovely mottled reds of the car’s oxidizing paint. This doleful 1970s Chevrolet Impala is the Ozymandias of the late, great Automotive Age.

Science-fiction fans will appreciate the three pictures from Mary Mattingly’s “Second Nature” project, constructed images of a post-industrial civilization through which hooded individuals wander in search of something. I liked the wreck of the Body Shop store washed up in the distant cove of “The Expedition” (2007).

The Argentinean-born photographer res is desperate to be transgressive. His three works are based on paintings, “Leccion de guitarra” (2006) on Balthus’s

“The Guitar Lesson” (1934). Balthus’s work is based, in turn, on a Pieta, and is genuinely transgressive: The figure of the dead Jesus is replaced by a live adolescent girl whose genitals are about to be violated by the motherly woman on whose lap she rests. The first owner of the painting kept it in an attic, the second tried to donate it to the Museum of Modern Art but had it returned, and since then it has been mostly hidden away in private collections. Res’s picture has two women, both in their late 20s or early 30s, no impending rape, and is rather flaccid porn, hardly more scandalous than an ad for Victoria’s Secret.

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“June Bride,” the summer show at the Yossi Milo Gallery has works by 22 photographers from many countries, some of the artists well-known, others not, but almost all with something to add. This is a good show to see with someone with whom you can discuss the pictures, ideally your spouse, your intended, or your ex.

Some of the interest comes from brides found in unfamiliar places. “The Brides of Sofiiska” (2006) by the Norwegian photographer Karl O. Orud shows several couples in the Bulgarian capital outside a mural-covered church with goldplated, onion-shaped domes. Seydou Keïta’s “Untitled #266” (1950–55) is a portrait of a Malian bride in an ample dress of white lace, seated and looking rather flummoxed. One of the two pictures, both titled “Hashem el Madani: ‘Studio Practices'” (early 1960s), by the Lebanese Akram Zaatari, shows a woman adjusting the veil on a bride; the other shows two men, one wearing a veil, holding a bouquet, and being embraced by the other. I think these have less to do with trangression than with suggested poses.

But the point of Wang Jin’s “To Marry a Mule” (1995) is transgression, although transgression lite. The Chinese photographer has a man in a black tie and tuxedo holding a bouquet of pink roses next to a mule with its cheeks painted pink, wearing black silk stockings. And the Australian Rosemary Laing’s phantasmagoric “bulletproofglass #4” (2002) shows a hovering black bird near a bride falling through space, a red gash at her throat, and a blotch of red on the bodice of her wedding gown. The Americans Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus, Lee Freidlander, and Bill Owens weigh in with pictures that comment on the psychology and sociology of their brides.

My two favorite images were Alec Soth’s “Melissa, Flamingo Inn” (2005) and the German August Sander’s “Rural Bride” (1920–25). The former is plump; she sits in her gown in a chair on a covered walkway outside the motel, her hands folded in her lap. Mr. Soth’s portrait grants her the dignity that should be every bride’s due. Sander’s black-and-white headshot shows the farm girl’s full complement of freckles. Not a beauty, her wreath of wildflowers transforms her into a creature of northern antiquity, a survivor from the Druidic past; transformation is what weddings are about.

Mazel tov!

wmeyers@nysun.com

“Epilogues” through August 24 (210 Eleventh Ave., between 24th and 25th streets, 212-989-7600); “June Bride” through August 17 (626 W. 25th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-414-0370).