The International Center of Photography's third Triennial, Dress Codes, is also the final installment in the ICP's exhibition cycle, A Year in Fashion. A global survey of photography and video art, the triennial is the only photography exhibition program of its kind in America. This year's edition raises the bar on what has already been a dynamic take on new and innovative work across the expanding spectrum of camera arts.

Here, the theme of fashion is taken as a form of social communication, with more than 100 works by 34 artists from 18 countries - none of whom is a fashion photographer. Each artist uses the evidence of personal style, either observed or created for the camera, to explore ideas of cultural identity, individuality, desire, group affiliation, and personality.

Left to right: Agnes, Red Dress, 2008, copyright Richard Learoyd, courtesy McKee Gallery, New York. Amanda Backstage at Heatherette, from the series Private Pageantry, 2005-present, copyright Jeremy Kost, courtesy the artist. Untitled (Maria), 2007, copyright Pinar Yolacan, courtesy the artist

Works range from tiny black-and-white photo booth images of African Americans, found and assembled into a commentary on identity by Brooklyn-based Lorna Simpson to a room-size installation by Berliner Thorsten Brinkmann, who used found objects to create masks which he modeled in costume for the camera, prints of which he then installed into a setting that consists of items salvaged from the streets of New York.

Yto Barrada, born in Paris and now living in Tangier, Morocco, takes the issue of political control over individual freedoms as a subject for her work. In The Belt, Step 1 to 9, she depicts an old woman wearing a traditional djellaba, disrobing layer by layer to reveal lengths of fabrics she has woven into her undergarments. The woman crosses the border between Ceutra, an autonomous Spanish town in Morocco, and Tangier to sell her contraband. Because of her age and gender, she is rarely stopped by customs officials. Barrada presents a dispassionate view of a daily struggle for survival in which clothing becomes a metaphor for concealment and a way to portray a largely invisible realitly.

New Yorker Jeremy Kost, on the other hand, hits the downtown night scene, from A-list openings to seedy drag clubs, wielding a cumbersome Polaroid camera. You are as likely to see unknown but high-style club kids as the current roster of celebrities in Private Pageantry, his chronicle of the flashy striving that has fueled the city's nightlife since the days of Studio 54.

Formal portraiture figures into the exhibition with a recent series created by Cindy Sherman that she based on an assignment done for Paris Vogue. In the images here, a group of women dressed in Balenciaga finery, portrayed as usual by the photographer, seem to skewer the fashion world's patronizing appreciation of downtown grit and seediness.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is a single portrait by Londoner Richard Learoyd. Created using a room-sized camera obscura fitted with a super-high quality 1950s Eastern European enlarger lens, the large-scale print belies the effects usually associated with camera obscura images. In Agnes, Red Dress, the young woman's flesh is rendered with startling precision, so that her pores, beauty spots, freckles, eyebrows, and soft facial hair are discernible. One of the strengths of this image is the associations that spring to mind when looking at it, such as British portraiture from the Victorian era; the simplicity of feminine beauty in wartime Britain; and the seductive power of a woman dressed to enhance her natural qualities.

Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, was organized by ICP curators Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, and Carol Squiers, and ICP adjunct curator Vince Aletti. The exhibition design is by Abbott Miller of Pentagram. Dress Codes opens tomorrow and continues through January 17, 2010 at the International Center of Photography. 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43^rd Street, New York, NY. 212.857-0045. Please check the website for related public programs and book signings.

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