By William Zimmer - The New York Times

At the Upper View Gallery are the results of an unusual collaboration between a sculptor and a photographer. The sculptor, Wilfredo Morel, says that his overriding subject is life, in particular life with all of its vicissitudes. This is evidently also the view of the photographer John Henry, whose subject, at least for purposes of this exhibition, is Mr. Morel's work.

The exhibition is titled ''Steele Family Album.'' Mr. Morel's pieces are made of steel, scrap metal actually, which has been discarded in the Hudson Valley area. (The extra ''e'' on steel presumably gives the word some swank.) The notion of a family album arose when Mr. Henry began to take pictures of selected aspects of the sculpture. The results often have the look of portraits.

Family has a wider meaning here. The partnership that has been forged by the two men is an ad hoc one. They met at a meeting of an association of Hudson Valley artists. That enough practicing artists live in the area to warrant such an association indicates a widespread communal feeling. But in the immediate bond between the two, Mr. Morel furnished Mr. Henry with engaging subject matter, while Mr. Henry provided something less tangible perhaps, the chance to see his work as another sees it.

The sculptures date mostly from this year, although the first one encountered inside the gallery is one in the window that was made in 1997. It is titled ''Mirror Image,'' and it is easily read as a life-size skinny figure looking at itself in a hand-held mirror. The viewer, Mr. Morel said in a gallery interview, is meant to see that while the figure gazes into an empty rectangle, he is also empty inside. Part of its chest has been peeled away to show this void. Calling attention to the feet of the figure, Mr. Morel says they are dissimilar as a symbol of humanity's imperfection. The bases that support a Morel piece also have meaning: here a metal square is turned up a bit at one corner, showing imperfection. 

That Mr. Morel considers himself in the same boat as the rest of humanity is obvious in ''Beast in Me,'' which also has a torso that is flayed open, exposing bones as well as a feral face. The faces of his pieces are often comic as well as threatening, and the beast character might have sprung from a medieval bestiary. This is the simplest work in the show in terms of the number of parts, with the exception of a work whose primary part is a tire jack-like tool. Mr. Morel turned it into a long-necked duck called ''Wilfredo's Day Off.'' He acknowledges Picasso's influence on his ability to anthropomorphize familiar metal objects.

''Transycle'' invokes two cyclists hunched over in the posture of bicycle racers. They are bent iron pipes, one topped with a rudimentary helmet; the other wears goggles. The base is a squashed propane gas tank. Mr. Morel's material is supplied by Carta Recycling and Container Company. He referred to it as his sponsor and said the company often calls him up, saying, ''Wilfredo, we've got something interesting for you.''

Mr. Morel's critique of the way modern society works is continued in ''Crumbled Monument With Pedestal.'' A monument to the New York City power blackout of 1977, its primary component is a piece of metal that was once square, marked with NYPA, for New York Power Authority. Mr. Morel has broken the square. The metal monument weighs much more than its columnar pedestal, an empty container for paper.

Another instance of inversion in which notions of light and weight are played with is ''Trading Lightly,'' a soaring piece whose trunk is the heavy chassis of a truck. Yet the stance of this hefty work is almost balletic. The title is surely a pun on ''treading lightly.''

It is hard to resist the observation that the John Henry in question is not a steel-driving man but the colleague of one. Mr. Henry was faced with starting over when his master photography file was stolen in a robbery of his home. One aspect of his subsequent work, he said in a conversation, is that it is more expressionistic than previously. But his photographs of Mr. Morel's sculptures are one-of-a-kind Polaroid transfers, made when the still-developing Polaroid picture is pressed to paper. The resulting images have a faded, ephemeral quality as opposed to the solidity of the sculptures themselves. Their unusualness also means that there is no longer any need for a master file.

Photographs of sculptures in the show are hung near their sources. They seem to be displayed too casually, pasted on frames, rather than put in frames with curling edges. Mr. Henry contended that they were indeed framed, affixed to the surfaces with museum tape. This free-floating look furthers the notion of life that dominates Mr. Morel's work. Mr. Henry obviously felt free to read what he liked into the sculptures. For example, a photograph of the head of the figure called ''Mirror Image'' is called ''Inca-Dinka-Doo'' because he was reminded of both Jimmy Durante -- by the figure's prominent nose -- and pre-Columbian sculpture. But as the documentary photographer he was once, he also made ''Portrait of the Sculptor as a Family Man'' in which Mr. Morel is posed with some of his creations.