Angela Strassheim is the undertaker of photography. Her stark images straddle the line between life and death, where the viewer arrives between breaths, perhaps the last.

"Left Behind" was the title of her first solo show at Marvelli Gallery in Chelsea. Debuting last spring, the images supposedly featured Strassheim's own born-again Christian family in moments of eerie quotidian pause.

Consider the impeccably groomed man, possibly a father lifting a skinny back-pocket comb to the innocent ivory face of a young boy. Would he cut the child's throat? The comb, knife-like, is suspended midair, suggesting that something sinister lurks in the neat package presented. The same goes for the topless little girl washing a woman's hair, as the child kneels on a stool over a tub with claw feet. Would she push her mother's head under the water? One must wonder if the final moment is just around the corner.

Strassheim's talent is so bold that even miniature toy animals laid out on a rug (without a child puppeteer) might enact mutiny once one's eyes leave the photograph. War could be a few moments away.

Is it any wonder that Strassheim, who received her MFA in Photography from Yale, worked as a certified forensic photographer in both Dade County, Florida and New York City?

Strassheim first received global attention for a startling image called Out With Mary, of a milky white girl lying dead on a mattress, her feet black as soot, the pubic hair between her sprawled legs just as dark. It was included in a group show called "Black Milk" - featuring 16 artists and a suicide theme - at Marvelli Gallery last year. Out With Mary was exhibited later at Paris Photo.

In the still, the postcards taped to Mary's night table depict a model with red hair curled high on the sides of her head and Jim Morrison, the deceased lead singer of the Doors. Both appear more alive than poor dead Mary. And they seem to say, "Do you know what happened here?"

There is a simple honesty to Strassheim's work, which makes the images particularly haunting. Like a mortician, she views her subjects clinically. Then, the moment they divert attention from her eye, she nails the image, which hints at the soul.

Strassheim's not trying to bury her subjects, she's prepping the bodies and the environment, just in case. Her gift is a unique one that sets her apart, possibly, ultimately to be recognized as one of the great photographers of our century.