DONNA FERRATO

Ferrato is known for the awful, intimate images of domestic abuse that she published in her 1991 book, "Living with the Enemy." One of those pictures, of a man slapping his wife, is included here, with a group of photographs from the nineteen-seventies and eighties that explore intimacy and abuse of another sort: encounters, both public and private, among the sexual adventurers known as swingers. A woman pushes her white pump into a man's face; he sucks on the stiletto heel. The couple involved in the slap is shown in a harrowing series of color shots that look like the nightmare dissolution sequence of a period sexploitation movie. The work tilts more toward Russ Meyer than toward Brassai, but it's still powerful stuff. Through June 29. (Higher Pictures, 764 Madison Ave., at 65th St. 212-249-6100.)