Alena Kotzmannová's exhibit "It's Starting Again" is a contemplative, personal affair of black-and-white photography and a playful video installation in three parts. Unfortunately, the gallery for this show, Prague City Gallery's space on the second floor of Old Town Hall, can sometimes be as noisy as the tourist information center on the ground floor of the building.

The first room of the show contains a cozy video installation titled "Home Cinema." With the encouragement of the gallery's kind, elderly attendants, visitors sit back on a long, soft couch and basically get ready to enjoy the show. A large TV in front of the couch is turned on and the logo and melody of Columbia Tristar appear; but instead of this being followed by a typical trailer or a movie, there is another logo and melody, this time for Hollywood Classics, then another for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and then another for Dreamworks, and so on — all foreplay but no action.

In the corner of this room, there are large posters for camp films: The Secret Life of an American Wife, starring Walter Matthau; Flipper and the Pirates; a Hungarian B-movie, and a manipulated poster for a film with Marlon Brando supposedly written, directed and with music by Charles Chaplin. "OK, you got me," is the humorous thought one has getting up from the couch to move on.

The next section, titled "Classics," takes place in two darkened rooms. Large, panoramic black-and-white photographs are projected onto a wall on the far side of the space. It is a silent carousel of 70 photos taken from 2001–2004, divided into four sections: water, cities by night, courtyards and suburbs. In section one, there are unmistakable shots along the banks of the Vltava River and many scenes from the Czech countryside and villages. Sections two and three seem to be mostly shot in other lands (apparently France, Berlin and Copenhagen) There are dilapidated courtyards and alleyways, and lots of street sellers and street markets. Night lights and night displays are prevalent in all of the sections, but especially in the last one, which was shot mostly in New York City.

Shadows and peripheries dominate the series of images, and the shots in Prague (Smíchov, Holešovice and along the Vltava) and drab Czech villages convey a sense of having been taken in the 1930s or '40s. That's due to Kotzmannová's particular photographic style, but also to the lasting charm of this country, which is not yet completely modernized and rebuilt to Western norms. Overall, there is an intriguing randomness to the photo loop, and the details of what was shot where and when seem unimportant.

If there is one photo in the "Classic" selection that captures the emotion of this section, it is an image of a lone skater on ice, shot from above, alone and at peace.

The last section of the show, up a short flight of stairs, is a photo-and-slide installation titled "Right There, Right Now." This room includes four large black-and-white photographs: an old checkerboard, a bunch of white balloons tied to a storefront door, a view of a road in the mountains (perhaps the Krkonoše) and an old, abandoned building in the woods.

There are color slides projected onto each corner of the room. The slides themselves show nondescript corners of a room: one with a chair, one with a table and chairs and a blank TV screen, two with leather chairs and bookshelves. This section is the least effective (and least emotive) of the three.

The emphasis on blow-ups, slide projectors and tricky use of video in this exhibit makes one wonder how else a traditional photographer like Kotzmannová (born 1974), who doesn't go in for nudity or shock value, can compete with the mass media and full-bore home entertainment in this day and age. That may be precisely the point, since Kotzmannová's exhibit seems intended to offer a calm respite from mass media and home entertainment.

But that point is obscured by the heavy traffic of tourists coming through the gallery, many asking for directions. This creates a constant chatter in broken English and German, which the kind ladies at the entrance are well aware of and seem fed up with.