Photo By Carl Solway Gallery

They are together and not together in Joseph Sterling's photograph "The Age of Adolescence (1959-1964)" -- a threesome in which two stand so closely they almost appear to the camera as a Janus-like single figure, but not one of the three looks at another. You can find the photo at CARL SOLWAY GALLERY, 424 Findlay St., Over-the-Rhine, through Dec. 23.

They wear leather-like jackets of similar cut but no hats, although it's clearly winter. Hats would disarray their careful hair, combed to mid-pompadour, as alike as their jackets. It is the early '60s, and Joseph Sterling's black-and-white photo says without words that these young men are uneasily feeling their way into adulthood while projecting -- they hope -- the assurance a slightly later generation would call "cool."

The picture's formal composition can't be faulted. The figure at left, who has his back to us, is cut by the film frame just behind the head, so that his elbow and cigarette and even the curve of his ear direct our attention firmly into the picture, and nothing takes it out. Facing him but with eyes cast down, the central figure might be speaking. Or not.

At right, with space between him and the picture's edge, the third young man clasps his arms behind his back and, in profile, looks at something beyond the frame, compositionally risky but effective. Instead of holding our attention within the picture, his glance outside to something we can never know heightens the sense of disjointed attention.

Behind all three, supporting the entire picture as securely as objects on a tray, a wire fence of vertical and horizontal strands forms a grid like those used by artists to block out their works. Details beyond are sparse. Snow from bottom to nearly midway, above that perhaps a building, perhaps some trees.