From Baghdad, Pictures of Peace

Nothing has exploded and no one is wounded in Phil Nesmith's photographs of Iraq. And that might be the most extraordinary thing about his show, opening Saturday at Irvine Contemporary.

"My Baghdad" chronicles Nesmith's two trips to the war zone in ambrotypes -- hazy, antique-looking images created on glass plates.

The surprisingly placid images were shot in 2003-04 and during a brief stint in 2006, and they include barren Iraqi landscapes, birds on a wire and sunsets marred only by a passing helicopter. They have the patina of old Civil War photographs, but were shot digitally -- because things move too quickly in Iraq to pull out a large camera and wait for a long exposure. "It's too dangerous for that," Nesmith says.

So how does one go to Iraq and come back without images of bloodshed and atrocity?

"That's what CNN is for, that's what Fox News is for," says Nesmith (pronounced nee-smith), an Arlington-based former Army intelligence sergeant who left the service in 2000 and arrived in Iraq as a civilian defense contractor in the early days of the war.

Part of it, of course, is that most of the photos were snapped during a markedly calmer period.

But it is also that Nesmith's objective was to capture "common daily scenes if you're an American soldier living and working there for a year." The images were plucked from personal snapshots from his time embedded with a single Army unit. Though he had taken war-zone photos while serving in Bosnia in the 1990s and has since become serious about photography (he had a space in last year's Artomatic), he hadn't considered a show until his first trip to Iraq was nearly complete. Last summer, some of the shots got a test run in smaller form at H&F Fine Arts gallery in Mount Rainier.

The Irvine show, with 10 of the glass plates and large-format images, opens with "Reunion," which compiles new works by the gallery's artists, on Saturday. The reception is from 6 to 8 p.m. 1412 14th St. NW. 202-332-8767.

Save the Date

EXHIBIT: It's Raining Frogs Because of the nature of the exhibits at the National Geographic Museum -- including CritterCam and the Nigersaurus display -- it's very rare that animals are around for you to gush over, as you might at the zoo. Skeletal re-creations and photos are usually all you get. But the next exhibit, the traveling show "Frogs: A Chorus of Colors," brings in 15 varieties of live amphibians and sets them up with habitats in the museum. The show, which has been to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, among other spots, allows visitors to hear different frog calls, see a frog skeleton (how did we know?) and catch Mark W. Moffett's separate photography show of frog close-ups. It opens Jan. 25. Free. Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday 10-5 through May 11. 1145 17th St. NW. 202-857-7588.

ON STAGE: "The Snow Queen" Goes Airborne Mara Neimanis spun and dangled and dreamed her way through a set of sold-out shows as Amelia Earhart on a giant jungle-gym of a plane in her theater work "Air Heart" at last summer's Capital Fringe Festival. And in a week, she's debuting her latest aerial work, this one suitable for kids. Her trapeze "Snow Queen," set atop "floating" ice castles and amid flying forest creatures , is part of Baltimore's experimental theater event, QuestFest, Jan. 17-20. $15; students and seniors, $10. Jan. 17 and 19 at 8 p.m., Jan. 18 at 10:30 a.m., Jan. 20 at 1 p.m. Towson University Center for the Arts, Studio Theatre, 8000 York Rd., Towson. 410-704-2787. For more on QuestFest, visit http://www.questfest.org.

THE SCENE: A Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Next week, a slew of events will celebrate the life of the civil rights hero, and one of the regulars is the Anacostia Community Museum's, which each year has a different theme (last year, it was poetry). In this year full of global-warming warnings, the subject of the upcoming talk (held off-site at the National Museum of Natural History) is environmental sustainability and justice, led by Robert Bullard. Free. 7 p.m. Jan. 17. Baird Auditorium, 10th and Constitution Ave. NW. Call 202-633-4875 for reservations or e-mail acmrsvp@si.edu.

The District