Farah Al Qasimi

The stately directness of the Emirati-raised photographer’s portraits is offset by the ambiguity of their backgrounds. She posed her father, a former diplomat, under curtains that match his dark tan thawb; her friend Ghaith is a study in white—his outfit, bedsheets, a headboard—posing between his own shadow and an even crisper one cast by a rose. In “Living Room Vape,” faces disappear altogether—one beyond the picture’s edge, another behind a cloud of mist—and the busy colors of patterned carpets and chinoiserie vases rush into the void. One image, “Piper at a Barbecue in Houston,” is both distinctly American and genuinely shocking: a dog with flash-reddened eyes cringes near a coffee table piled with guns and raw meat.