Polaroid Greetings from Asbury Park

The Gallery 13 is one of a number of small green shoots that’s popped up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in the past few years. (Asbury is one of those towns that spent the eighties and nineties fighting severe problems with drugs, crime, and blight, and appears to have turned the corner lately.) Its latest exhibition, “LoFi,” showcases pictures made with ostensibly junky plastic-lens cameras. It’s an aesthetic that matches perfectly the run-down-shore-town quality of Asbury, and I’m especially happy about it because my pal Jodi Shapiro will have a bunch of her stuff on view. (I also like the old-style peel-apart-Polaroid border on the poster, which suggests a level of instant-photo-literacy at work here.) If you’re anywhere near the Jersey shore, drop in for the opening on Saturday night.