High art emerges from low-tech cameras in 'Cheap Shot'

Because high-tech cameras can number the hairs on your head and produce panoramas of exacting clarity, some artists naturally enough head in the opposite direction, using toys to mangle their imagery into art.

	Susan Burnstine's "The Road Most Traveled"

A black dog shambles along on the edge of a river of light in Susan Burnstine's "The Road Most Traveled." Damage eats at the edges of Shannon Welles' "Over the Sea," featuring a man from the present jumping into the past.

An image of a buck-toothed bug ride from Coney Island wouldn't have the same impact through the lens of a real camera, but Michelle Bates' plastic one gave her horror on the cheap, as well as clouds that look like microwave popcorn and a roller-coaster with a single, doomed car.

"Cheap Shot" is an under-the-radar show with an over-the-top payoff, well worth a visit.

Through Nov. 28. "Cheap Shot, Plastic Cameras: the low tech of high art" at Photographic Center Northwest, 900 12th Ave. Hours: Monday, noon-9:30 p.m.; Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, noon-9:30 p.m.

-- Regina Hackett