They also alter our memories, which otherwise are burnished and altered by the inexorable passage of time.

Photography in the 19th century — the "mirror with a memory" — was considered, at least initially, as a tool to capture the world whole rather than one to use for interpreting it, as drawing and painting did.

Twentieth-century critics argued about whether photography was indeed a direct trace of experience, like a footprint in the sand, or rather a reflection of the photographer's particular point of view and therefore an art form.

The camera from the start was seen as a challenge to the painter's brush, and many 19th- and 20th-century photographers, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Stei-Áchen, created images in a painterly, pictorial mode before the medium finally found its modern voice in the classic images of Paul Strand, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

Among many points of contention, the most appropriate display of photographs is prominent: Should they, almost like traditional Asian scroll paintings, be seen in intimate, one-on-one settings, or can they hold their own as framed light paintings, mounted on a gallery wall?

The images on view at 1132 Bishop St. certainly deal effectively for the most part with the preservation of Native Hawaiian values, resources and sacred sites, but they also renew questions about the medium's proper display.

Traditional black-and-white photographs — some in large formats — feature landscapes, portraits and city environments. Many of the photographers have worked together previously in published book projects.

Mark Hamasaki's modest 2003 silver gelatin print "Wailele huna o Kahalu'u" is an especially striking, quiet piece, resonantly poetic and articulate.

Ross Togashi's 2004 "Documents: Evidence Found in a Library" series, consisting of silver gelatin prints accompanied by mixed-media boxes, exemplifies photography in the service of evoking poignant loss.

The photographed bound documents include the seminal "Blount Report," part of the 1894 House Foreign Relations Committee Report. It was prepared by U.S. Rep. James Blount, who was sent by President Grover Cleveland to assess conditions in Hawai'i after the Hawaiian Republic had been overthrown by the "Committee of Safety."

For the sovereignty movement, some say that this government report details the best basis for claims by Hawaiians that the kingdom was stolen.

These images capture what has been lost in at least two senses: most of these priceless documents — reminders of the lost kingdom — were destroyed in last October's catastrophic Manoa flood that savaged the University of Hawai'i's Hamilton Library.

Some of the other images more directly document in a journalistic idiom Native Hawaiian activism for self-determination, past and present, from the early George Santos/Kalama Valley struggle of the 1970s through contemporary resistance to the military presence here in the Islands.

Perhaps because its iconic significance has deepened by the passage of time, Ed Greevy's powerful image of Terrilee Keko'olani, captured near the inception of the Hawaiian Renaissance, cultural as well as political, comes closest of all the documentary works in the show to standing on its own.

However, the nagging question persists: Would this image possess even more mana in its miniature form, pressed between the pages of a book?

It is in Franco Salmoiraghi's 1997 series "Kaho'olawe: Tortured Metal/Broken Stone" that the debate ripens and resolves.

A gifted photographic artist at work here in Hawai'i since 1968, Salmoiraghi combines silver prints with charcoal, graphite, pastel and earth on distressed metal plates to create a hybrid expression intended to capture the complex reality of Kaho'olawe.

He writes: "Use of symbolic materials to draw and mark on the photographic prints are meant to amplify the emotional impact of the images by altering the usual pristine quality of the photographic print, which felt much too clean to describe an environment placed under severe environmental stress by bombs and explosions."

Especially in the haunting "Abandoned Wheel and Fishing Shrine," the gambit pays huge dividends, and the intellectual twittering machine discourse of what is art quiets in tranquil contemplation, humbled in the presence of a photographic epiphany, a song of beauty and rebirth.