By Daryl Lang

WASHINGTON—Back for its second year, FotoWeekDC offers a packed schedule of exhibitions, museum shows and events scattered across the sprawling capital city. Photography fans have a few more days to catch all the exhibits.

For newcomers, the place to start is FotoWeekCentral 1, at 3338 M Street NW (near 33rd Street) in Georgetown. There, visitors can pick up a pass that admits them to FotoWeek exhibits (cost: free), as well as a map and schedule.

The FotoWeekCentral 1 gallery includes a range of work spanning two floors. The work includes two family-friendly National Geographic displays, finalists from the FotoWeek DC Awards and projects by photojournalists Peter van Agtmael and Pete Muller showing the aftermath of conflict in northern Uganda. Visitors can also check out a wall of pictures submitted as part of a one-night community photo shoot earlier this week. In the evenings, digital video projectors cast photographs onto the side of the FotoWeekCentral 1 building.

Nearby along M Street NW, four more storefronts are temporarily home to FotoWeek galleries. The shows weigh heavily toward documentary and news photography.

FotoWeekCentral 3 includes some of the most serious work, including a group show on Iraq war photojournalism curated by photographer Lucian Perkins. Also on view there is “Thy Brother’s Keeper,” a show concerned with human rights around the world curated by Geno Rodriguez and shown previously at The Alternative Museum in New York in 2006. It features work by 25 photographers; Fanie Jason’s essay showing the brutality of locally administered justice in South Africa is a standout.

In FotoWeek Central 5, winners of the White House News Photographers Association 2009 Eyes of History contest are displayed as big inkjet prints. If you crave more pictures of Barack Obama, winners from the 2009 FotObama contest (first shown earlier this year at The Newseum) are on display at Pepco’s Edison Place Gallery, 702 8th Street NW (near E Street).

There are some breaks from straight photojournalism, including an enchanting show at FotoWeek Central 2 called “New Images from Russia,” also curated by Perkins. It features large-scale portraits and landscapes by Liza Faktor, Alexander Gronsky, Olya Ivanova, and Rafal Milach.

Over at FotoWeekCentral 4, visitors get a look at the cutting edge of new photography from a Magenta Foundation show of work by emerging artists and a library of recently published photo books.

Another FotoWeek venue, at 1515 14th St., has a show on South Africa featuring the work of Swedish photojournalist Per-Anders Pettersson and South African photographer Karina Turok.

Around town, galleries and museums have scheduled photo shows to correspond with FotoWeek. Two highlights include “Edward Burtynsky: Oil” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (through December 13) and “Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens” at The Phillips Collection (through January 10, 2010).

FotoWeek DC is a nonprofit organization and receives support from the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, various corporate sponsors, and D.C.-area institutions. Its executive director is Theo Adamstein, the president of local pro lab Dodge-Chrome.

The festival runs through November 14, though many of the gallery and museum shows remain up beyond that date. More information is at www.fotoweekdc.org.