The Sweet Briar College Art Gallery will present “The Madness of Paradise: Photographs of Gregory Crewdson, Annabel Elgar and Justine Kurland,” an exhibit curated by Louisa Meeks, a 2005 Sweet Briar graduate. The exhibit opens Thursday, Sept. 1, in the Anne Gary Pannell Art Gallery and will run through Oct. 1. Meeks will give a gallery talk, followed by a reception, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Sept. 1.

Justine Kurland’s “Parade Across Dunes” is part of “The Madness of Paradise,” a photography exhibition curated by Louisa Meeks ’05. Image used by permission of the artist and Mitchell-Innes and Nash Gallery, New York.The three artists in “The Madness of Paradise,” Meeks said, are attempting to represent a kind of perfect environment or utopia through the practice of “staged” photography. Using imagery that is both familiar and foreign, a mix of nearly impossible fantasy and possible reality, they invite the viewer into the worlds that they have created.

The works shown in the exhibit are on loan from the International Center of Photography and the Mitchell Inness and Nash Gallery in New York City, Columbus State University in Columbus, Ga., the Margulies Foundation Collection in Miami, and the University of Florida, Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville.

Crewdson received his bachelor’s in 1985 at Purchase College, State University of New York, and his Master of Fine Arts in 1988 from the Yale School of Art, where he currently is an adjunct professor of photography. His work is in the permanent collections of the Broad Art Foundation, the Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Emily Fisher Landau Collection, and the Margulies Collection, among others.

Elgar earned a Bachelor of Arts with honors in film, video and photographic arts at the Central London Polytechnic Institute in 1994, and her master’s in photography at the Royal College of Art in 2001. Several of the works in the exhibit are from the “Black Flag” series. “Black Flag” was commissioned by the Women’s Playhouse Trust for the Wapping Project as part of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation Commissions 2004. Elgar also is supported by the Arts Council of England.

Kurland earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1996 at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and her M.F.A. at Yale University in 1998. Her work is featured in many permanent collections, including the Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Sweet Briar College Art Gallery exhibitions are research-, studio- and community-based and are presented at three locations on campus: Anne Gary Pannell Center Art Gallery, Babcock Fine Arts Center Gallery and Benedict Hall Gallery.

Gallery hours are noon to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, noon to 5 p.m. Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission, lectures and related programs are free and open to the public. Tours are available on request.

For more information, please e-mail Rebecca Massie Lane, director of SBC galleries, or call (434) 381-6248.