One Atlanta man wrapped the American flag around him, lifted a corner and kissed it. A young woman from Connecticut put on a pretty dress, held the folded flag out in front of her and curtseyed.

Another young man —- whose brother has been stationed for two years in Iraq —- neatly folded the flag as if to adorn a military coffin, placed it on the floor, put his hands in his pockets and looked away.

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When Atlanta photographer Sheila Pree Bright set out to capture Generation Y's attitudes about America in her series "Young Americans," she brought people ages 18 to 25 into her studio and let them decide how to pose with the flag. Twenty-eight of the resulting portraits will be on display starting May 3 at the High Museum of Art. The exhibit will be on view through Aug. 10, then will travel to the Amistad Center for Art & Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Conn.

It's rare for an Atlanta artist to have a solo show at the city's leading art museum, but this is just the latest coup for the fast-rising Bright, who won the prestigious Santa Fe Prize in 2006. Bright earned her MFA from Georgia State in 2003 and works out of a studio at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

The High's photography curator, Julian Cox, was immediately interested in Bright's idea for "Young Americans" when she mentioned it in 2006.

"He said, 'Well, Sheila, when you start photographing it, let me know and I'll come once a week and give you a critique,' " Bright said. "I mean, it was as simple as that."

Bright later was visited by a group of arts patrons including a representative of the Aetna Foundation, which pledged financial support for Bright's project —- and bought her an approximately $40,000 Hasselblad HD3 digital camera. It's a large-format camera often used for fashion photography, and it made it easier for her to produce the large-scale photos she wanted for the show.

Cox said the timing of the exhibit is fortuitous, coming months before the presidential election.

"It's an interesting idea anyway, but it has become very timely in relation to the larger cultural shifts that are going on the country, and in the way a lot of young people seem to be inspired by [candidate Barack] Obama," he said.

America's newest generation of voters is also very racially diverse, something that is reflected in the exhibit. Rather than labeling her subjects —- or even just letting the viewers decide —- Bright asked the young people to give a statement about America and decide what to call themselves. The resulting self-labels form a fascinating road map to young people's shifting attitudes about race and nationality. One woman called herself "Chinese," although she is a U.S. citizen. Some black Americans called themselves African-Americans and some said simply, "American."

"It's very liberating that she's giving them the opportunity to describe themselves," Cox says.

The soft-spoken Bright describes herself as very shy and introverted. "The camera is how I express myself," she said. She grew up the daughter of a U.S. Army officer, a Vietnam veteran, and the family moved around often. They lived in Germany, Colorado, upstate New York, Kansas. Her parents hailed from Waycross, and Bright came to Atlanta to be close to her parents after they retired to their hometown.

It wasn't until she moved to Atlanta that Bright lived in a place with a large African-American community. An earlier photo project, "Suburbia," dealt with what she found here: a large black middle class. The photos were taken inside their spacious homes, showing the decor and status symbols, but not the residents.

"I didn't want to show them because you would just pay attention to that. I wanted to keep it subtle. I wanted to keep you questioning and wondering who lived in this environment," she said.

In contrast to those oblique photos, "Young Americans" features subjects against a white background, often looking directly at the camera. She photographed young people in Atlanta, California, Connecticut and North Carolina.

Her approach is reminiscent of work by one of Bright's idols, Richard Avedon, the fashion and portrait photographer. For his series "In the American West," he posed ordinary Americans such as truckers and oil-rig workers against a stark background, enlarging the prints to a grand scale.

Bright agrees there's a similarity, but notes that she took a very different approach —- empowering her subjects to decide how they wanted to pose, how they wished to be described, and including their statements beside their photos in the exhibit.

"I think where my work differs is that I'm giving the sitter the control," she said. "They're telling me what to do and I'm just the observer."

"YOUNG AMERICANS: PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHEILA PREE BRIGHT"

Saturday-Aug. 10 at the High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. $18 for adults, $15 for students and seniors, $11 for children 6 and up, free for members and children under 6. More information at high.org.