February 3.

*** There is a predominant if unlikely thread that runs through the Bermuda Society of Arts' 19th annual photographic exhibition, which concludes a three-week run at City Hall on Friday.

That thread, for those who haven't yet seen it, is fish. That's right -- fish.

Big fish, little fish, schools of fish. Walking through the City Hall gallery the other day was a little like walking through the Aquarium on a Saturday afternoon. One also got the impression that many of the photographers who have work on display got a new underwater camera for Christmas and couldn't wait to try it out.

Mind you, a lot of these same photographers have produced some stupendously beautiful images -- eye-popping, up-close images that instill a sense of awe in the observer if he or she didn't have one already.

Among the most outstanding of this lot are Susan Bendell's "Tomato Clown Fish'' and "Star'' (much of her work is alive with colour and movement), John Williams' fabulous "Sea of the Barracuda (Galapagos Under Waves)'' (an almost three-dimensional army of the submarine-like sea creatures), Joan Murdoch's sharp, crisp images of various ocean critters (Ms Murdoch shows a tremendous amount of skill in what are billed as her first underwater exposures) and Ian Murdoch's witty, happy "Snuggle'' (which was given the honour of best in show).

Also worthy of mention in the subaquatic category is the work of Stephen Gale, Kathleen Kapalka, Russell Whayman and Raymond Beaulne.

Of course, the denizens of the deep aren't the only subjects to have caught the eyes and imaginations of the Society's more intrepid lensmen.

Among the artists who belong to this National Geographic school of picture-taking but have focused on other subject matter are Marye Lee Dunkley (whose beautifully captured "big cats'' series might lead the observer to think the shots were posed if doing so wasn't impossible), Sherry Bridges (whose well-detailed "Monarch Butterfly'' looks as if it might flit out of the photo at any second) and David W. Johnson (whose "Phoethon Leparus Bermuda Longtailis a well-crafted study of flight in progress).

On the subject of magazines, there are a few so-called travel photographs here that could easily serve as contenders for the pages of any number of prestigious travel journals. The most striking of this ilk are without a doubt deForest Trimingham's sumptuous Indonesian studies, which are all the more remarkable for being his first public showings in colour, and Katherine Hubbard's "Vielle Ville'' series, particularly her shots of the narrow, pastel-tinted alleyways of a provincial French village.

Dwyer Williams' photos -- an Ansell Adams-like pair of hilly northern vistas -- are also good.

Of course, there are some members of the Society who have dared to go beyond the merely representational with their work. In his first journalistic submissions, for example, Bob McCutcheon offers a moving perspective on the human condition with his stirring portraits of a hungry African child and a still-bloodied newborn baby. Similarly, John Berg plays effectively with surfaces and shadows in his luminous black-and-white "Train'' series, while Andrew Pettit's "Bermuda Glass'' collection constitutes a wonderful, shimmering study of light, colour, texture and depth.

The latter -- a first portfolio by the artist -- is in this reviewer's judgment the most interesting and eye-catching of the entire exhibition.

On the whole, the exhibition could have benefited from a stronger curatorial hand, which is a problem with a lot of the shows at City Hall. But there is strength in many of the individual works -- the McCutcheons, the Pettits and those of Will Collieson, who has subverted the apparent obsession that many of his fellow photographers have with the sea by positing in his three submissions a classical bust, a lipsticked mannequin and the feet of what appears to be a satyr where all the pretty fish should be.

Leave it to the always inventive Mr. Collieson to steal the show yet again.

Danny Sinopoli