By Julia Morton

Documentary photos look like the truth, but don’t be fooled. Using edits, focus, lighting and all the rest, photographers distort what they see. In fact, it’s not the facts that matter the most, but the photographer’s creative skills that make documentary photography an art form and not simply a series of lucky snap shots.

Fuse Gallery presents No One’s Not Happy When They’re Dancing, Cheryl Dunn’s photographs and videos of concerts, dance events and street mayhem. The pictures, taken at venues across the globe, capture the physical crush and rapturous nature of fans. Many are humorous, like the photo that features lusty, grinning women in the foreground; while behind them, a young man gives a testosterone-inspired howl. Several images depict the multitude as a flexing mass of anonymous bodies. Although the show could use some editing, Dunn’s exploration of the life-affirming bonds that form and then dissipate around rituals of music and dance make her vision worth seeing.

Clayton Patterson documents people, place and times in his show The Lower East Side at the Kinz, Tillou + Feigan gallery. Patterson, a longtime resident of the neighborhood, has created a gritty romance filled with tragic characters, grimy conditions and unabashed individualism. The show features photographs hung in similar groupings and rows of juxtaposed portraits. Short on landmarks, it’s hard to place Patterson’s photographs from the 1980s and ’90s in the current landscape, but it’s clear by virtue of the residents he portrayed that the area has changed dramatically. It’s also clear that Patterson is a social activist. His images serve as a reminder that, however humble it may have been, the area was home to the homeless, to new immigrants, to old timers and to colorful eccentrics who gave the city an edgy flair it now sadly lacks.

Cig Harvey’s show at the Robin Rice Gallery documents daydreams. Harvey’s unapologetic depictions of musing females, though honest enough, are oddly unexpected given the bra-busting, foul mouth depiction of women now currently in vogue. Although her figures are placed in meditative poses, her presentation is direct and graphic, featuring strong, saturated colors and simple settings. Staring down into underwater caves, sitting midway on a narrow step, or losing themselves during a meal, her figures may be gentle and detached, but they too address many of the same themes seen in the pervious work, namely, the effort to find and document meaning in the things we do, the places we live, and the people we love.

No One’s Not Happy When They’re Dancing through Oct 27 at Fuse Gallery, 93 2nd Ave. (betw. 5th & 6th Sts.), 212-777-7988;  The Lower East Side through Oct. 27 at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen, 529 W. 20th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-929-0500; You Look At Me Like An Emergency through Nov. 4 at Robin Rice Gallery, 325 11th St. (betw. Washington & Greenwich Sts.), 212-366-6660.