Sex, drugs, power, politics, and intoxications of every kind are on display at the Robert Koch Gallery's current exhibition "Obsession." The group show chronicles a century's worth of photographic investigations into one of society's most sensational and disturbing predilections. Examining the varied and ofttimes irrational yearnings of our culture, "Obsession" spans behaviors from the fetishistic to the deranged, and from the unreasonably manic to the coldly and politically calculated.

The exhibition offers the term "obsession" as an open-ended concept that contains a myriad of libidinal, psychoanalytic and consumer-related connotations. Less focused on the artists' personal fixations and directed more toward society at-large, the photographs on display investigate our culture's propensity to become shamefully attached to the irrational. Some, like Theodore Zichy, a mysterious and eccentric early Twentieth-century Londoner who claimed to be of noble lineage, campily chronicle the erotic fantasies of modern society. Others, like the American photographer Jeff Brouws, depict our manic desire for show-biz idolatry. While others, like the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's large-scale color panoramas of the southern California oil fields, reflect society's obsessive demand for fossil fuels and other consumer items.

"Obsession" includes the photography of Ken Botto, Jeff Brouws, Edward Burtynsky, Lauren Greenfield, Lynn Hershman, Gabor Kerekes, Wayne Levin, Pierre Molinier, Bill Owens, Jan Saudek, Mike Smith, Jo Whaley, Alexander Zhitomirsky, Count Theodore Zichy, and others.