Photo courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography Sometimes brutal, sometimes surreally peaceful, the photography of Jo Ann Callis will be on display starting Saturday in the Center for Creative Photography in an exhibit called "Cake Hat Pillow."

There is a very subtle brutality to Jo Ann Callis' pictures. They reveal their objects, strip them down to the naked skin and contain the power to catch the attention of someone just glancing at seemingly peaceful images.

They leave observers with a strange aftertaste and a desire to figure out what makes them feel like they have been slapped in the face.

Callis, born in Cincinnati, studied painting and sculpture before she got married, moved to California and gave birth to two children.

Taking up her academic career again in 1970 at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), she enrolled in a class with photographer Robert Heinecken. Heinecken, known for unconventional work, encouraged Callis to concentrate on a dreamlike, set-up style of photography. This finally gave her the ability to express thoughts in pictures, something she hadn't thought possible. Callis stayed at UCLA, earning a master's degree in photography in 1977.

Callis' work, influenced by the surrealism of the 1920s, shows abstract fantasies and makes intimate statements. Every single picture is staged and looks static, sometimes like a painting. She also takes advantage of her painting and sculpting skills to create theatrical environments by setting up stages or modeling figures for the photos. After using black and white film in the beginning, she switched to color, letting it dominate most of her work.

Douglas Nickel, director of the Center for Creative Photography, organized "Cake Hat Pillow."

"We are especially pleased to present Jo Ann Callis' work, because it is widening imagination boundaries; it no longer gives the feeling to be bound by reference to the outside world," Nickel said. "We are also pleased she is committed to presenting all her work at the center. She represents a great contribution to women's history of photography."

The home is a major aspect of Callis' pictures, letting objects in the household tell the weirdest stories. Bathtubs, beds and kitchen tables convey strange feelings; domesticity is a theme she always comes back to.

She shows humans in weird poses, hiding their faces. Sometimes nearly naked, they express helplessness, but also eroticism. Creating a guilty feeling of voyeurism, of being too curious, they have astonishing effects on the viewer.

Her current works feature digital pictures of babies, which are taken in close-up shots, making the most innocent creations on earth look undeniably creepy.

Callis is putting conventional objects into the twilight of controversy, questioning and exaggerating them.

Currently Callis teaches at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts). She has shown her work at the "Museum of Modern Art" in New York and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Accompanying the exhibit will be four events: