The photographs Amy Blakemore takes with a crappy plastic camera can make you cry. When Amy Blakemore: Photographs 1988-2008 originally opened at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, people kept stopping and lingering in front of Dad (1999), which she took of her father just after he died. Images of death lure people in, but usually it’s the shocking photojournalistic kind. This simple, quiet picture dunks your head in a bucket of loss. Every photo captures a particular moment in time, but Blakemore’s capture concentrated doses of human experience. If you know her work at all, you probably know that she shoots her photographs exclusively with a Diana camera. The Diana is a 1960s plastic camera made in Hong Kong by the “Great Wall Plastic Factory.” The Diana was so cheap, it was given away as a carnival prize. But the sheer crappiness of the camera is part of the appeal. Its inherent defects—the photos it produces are vignetted and blurry, with low-contrast, oddly colored images—yield haunting images in Blakemore’s hands. Amy Blakemore should be a lot better known than she is. She’s a solid, thoughtful artist, not a careerist, as low-key and unassuming as her work (and her choice of camera equipment). KELLY KLAASMEYER

Thu., Sept. 2, 7 p.m.; Thursdays, Fridays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Starts: Sept. 2. Continues through Feb. 13, 2010