Wilshire Center

Lou Stoumen’s black-and-white photographs from the 1940s make you wish you could return to that decade, even though he presents some hard facts about World War II (in posted news bulletins and the faces of young soldiers) and shows the effects of poverty on men who warm themselves around an urban bonfire. It isn’t that the Los Angeles photographer sentimentalizes these street scenes. In his “Small Miracles,” he pictures humanity with such fleshy authenticity that you yearn for a world of absolutely real people.

On the prowl for pictures in the streets of New York, Stoumen grabs a shot of drunken sailors embracing, a “Sea of Hats” in Times Square and a dime-a-dance girl. In a subway he catches an exquisite moment of embarrassed anticipation in the face of a young woman about to be kissed by a sailor. Photographs of Puerto Rico are more inclined to show the down side of life, but a terminally ill patient and a woman for hire don’t lack for dignity. In East Los Angeles, he finds blind children and dismal tenements in the shadow of City Hall, yet here again he sees human situations that are neither romantic nor hopeless. Whatever his subject matter, Stoumen pictures a reassuring sense of community. (Jan Kesner Gallery, 164 N. La Brea Ave., to May 14.)