What do egg whites, ammonium chloride, and light-sensitive salts give you? A picture, as we learn in “Outta My Light!: Picturing the Processes of Photography” (through March 29), with keepsakes culled from the Henry’s permanent collection. There’s more to photography, even in our digital age, than just pointing, clicking, and printing. Take for example Robert and Shana Parke Harrison’s Gathering, a gelatin silver print on a wood panel. Robert appears to be falling underneath a stack of random items, and the image is decidedly unreal. Yet you couldn’t attain the same detail in a painting or sketch. Across the room is my personal favorite, Isaac Layman’s Tools—nothing more than some bottles of booze and tools printed exceptionally large. But the sharpness is astounding. Layman used a digital back for his analog camera and took a long exposure in which a 1-by-8,000-pixel line was captured repeatedly down the entire frame. I never knew a fifth of tequila and a wrench could look so good. JOSHUA LYNCH

Dec. 27-March 29, 2008