A crisply starched dress shirt is Smith’s only weapon in her battle against the windmills of power. In each of a dozen self-portraits in this cramped show made in the grand estates of 19th-century cotton farms in the Southern United States, she poses her body as though it were forever out of place. The rich shadows in her monochrome photographs nearly consume her. Only the shirt stands out against the colonial opulence. 

Formally, the prints would make a photography student’s folio proud. Conceptually, they win acclaim from the institution unable to repair anything otherwise. Politically, Smith abdicates her power to the architecture of her imagination built from her ancestors’ agony. There’s no conversation, no challenge, no win.