The purpose of conceptual art isn't to dazzle the viewer with an image. It's to spur the viewer to think about something else by using an image.

In the case of Václav Stratil, the image is often the unusual-looking artist himself. Stratil, born in 1950 in Olomouc, south Moravia, is a graphic artist, painter, photographer, performance artist and musician. His work in photography mostly centers around the ongoing theme of identity and is expressed in the form of extraordinary conceptual self-portraits.

His current exhibition "Pairs" at the Josef Sudek Studio in Malá Strana consists of only eight photographs — seven in color and one in black and white — which are part of a larger series that he began in 2002. The portraits, all shot in commercial studios with a standard portrait backdrop, at first glance appear to be banal. But they are not.

Unlike Stratil's previous self-portraits, in which the artist is alone and often seen in surrealistic poses or costume, "Pairs" shows the artist with someone else who may or may not be a significant part of his life: a teenage boy, a man his age, a young girl. The relationship between Stratil and the other person in the photograph is not revealed in the titles. They could represent stereotypical pairs rather than specific relationships.

In each photo, Stratil transforms himself. He might be a father, gay lover, pathetic aging hipster, detached or weird relative, or a colleague in the research department. He may be a freak among freaks or a straight-faced elderly man.

In one photo, Stratil is with a young, David Bowie-like hipster. With a mustache and beard, Stratil looks just as hip, with a tattoo showing just beneath his short-sleeve T-shirt. In another photo his counterpart is a guy with a slight harelip, while Stratil, sporting a Hitler-style mustache, has a slightly contorted face.

In another photo, Stratil poses with three young rockers as if they were a band. The artist looks ridiculous, wearing woman's clothes, red-framed sunglasses, red fingernail polish and gaudy silver rings on his fingers.

In the sole black-and-white photo, Stratil is with a young girl, his arm around her affectionately, seemingly in a filial sense. Next to this picture is one in which Stratil has his arm around a young techno kid, and they're wearing matching clothing.

Once you've seen the photos, a close read of the text on the gallery wall reveals that Stratil has photographed himself with people whom he knows well: his sons, his partner, his assistants and some art collectors. Yet even with this knowledge, it's difficult to correctly guess what the relationships are between the artist and the people beside him.

The effect of these contrasted, untitled photographs is powerful. They subtly show how the person beside you so easily affects how you look or are perceived. It also shows how we alter ourselves, intentionally and sometimes absurdly, to fit in better with the person (or people) we desperately want beside us. Finally, it shows how we lose part of our identity by being in a pair, or how we camouflage ourselves beside another.

With "Pairs," Stratil may also be speaking directly to the Czech art community. Despite his strong reputation as an elder among artists, he is still marked as an outsider, a solitary figure modestly succeeding in a career that encourages group identification and collective efforts for encouragement and advancement.

In connection with this exhibit, Stratil has a new book titled I'm History, focusing on the series of photographic self-portraits that he started in 1991. The title is playful and uncertain, like the artist's work. Is he announcing his rightful place in Czech art history? It could also mean, in American slang, "I'm out of the picture, I'm gone."

Most likely, the title of the book (available only in Czech) is a response to Tomáš Pospiszyl, one of the best art critics on the Czech scene, who wrote in 2001, "Last year Václav Stratil celebrated his 50th birthday, but Czech art history still doesn't know what to do with him. Although he made several works in the 1980s and 1990s that are today interpreted as milestones of Czech art, we are still perplexed about the others."