One walks through high-ceilinged spaces whose walls are covered in large scale paintings of a crowded pool or beach-side resorts or quiet reflections in an upstate pond – before coming to the small back room where Joshua Touster’s thoroughbred racing images are on display. Printed in a manageable size (13 x 19), Touster’s color photographs document daily life at East Boston’s Suffolk Downs racetrack over a number of years, covering all aspects of the track from the stables and jockey rooms to the stands and discarded betting slips at the punters’ feet. Shot both from a distance and close up, some photos have the exaggerated perspective of a wide-angle lens necessitated by the tight space in non-public areas.

Choosing what to include from a large body of work in an exhibit is a heavily subjective task. Though all photographs on display document the people, horses, and environment of the track, several images make me want to see more of the work that was not included: a lovely backlit portrait of a horse’s head in muted tones, the mud-splattered face of a jockey after a race, a long shot of two mud-covered jockeys unhorsed in the track’s mud, a woman’s hand gently stroking the silk-covered head of a thoroughbred, and an image in the jockey room of a jockey’s side with a horse’s head tattoo.