Although they separated over the twenty-five-year course of this project, DuBois's mother and father are at the emotional core of his show of color photographs. The drama remains offstage, but tension reverberates in even the most ordinary situations (Mom smoking in the backyard, Dad drinking in the kitchen) and gives the images an edge of unease. Like similarly fraught family pictures by Larry Sultan, Tina Barney, and Mitch Epstein, DuBois's images are at once tender and ruthless. You sense that, as his subjects' son, any distance he's achieved is hard-won, and it's balanced by affection and concern that extend to his sister and nephew, the subjects of several photographs that widen the family circle. Through Dec. 5. (Higher Pictures, 764 Madison Ave., at 65th St. 212-249-6100.)