The mind of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is too complicated, too mired in 19th-century sensibility to contemplate from our perch on the verge of the 21st century. We read his most famous works - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, written under Dodgson's world-famous pseudonym, Lewis Carroll - and it's tempting to attribute the wild fantasy and surreal depictions to drugs, maybe, or mental illness, possibly.

Reading his journals and selected pieces of the some 98,000 letters he wrote during his lifetime show a man devoted to God and logic, with a burning core of appreciation for beauty and purity, which he found in the faces of children - most notably young girls.

The Dayton Art Institute is hosting 'Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition,' now through June 11. It may be seen by some as a slightly risky proposition, given the popular current speculation as to Dodgson's motives in his admittedly obvious preoccupation with prepubescent girls. But the 60 original photographs, augmented by first editions and Alice memorabilia, go far to enlighten and enlarge any speculation.

DAI Director Alex Nyerges says he knew next to nothing about Dodgson before the museum planned this exhibition; he has since become an amateur expert, having immersed himself in Dodgson's letters and biographies. He deflects any speculation as to Dodgson's character, believing the artist's motives to be as pure as the faces of the children he photographed.

'I knew so little about him before,' Nyerges said. 'I have a better sense of where he was coming from. Taking a purely romantic, Victorian perspective on young girls. We shouldn't judge - we cannot understand the context in which he was living.

'If we don't think about love in terms of sex and physical contact,' Nyerges continued, 'there's an obvious beauty and grace in what he did.'

That said, the exhibit speaks for itself in terms of photographic excellence. Dodgson's specialized in portraits, experimenting on his family. He was eldest of a large brood, living a life (in Oxford, England) full of friends and children, many of whom became willing subjects for his work. Taking pictures in the mid-1800s was a tedious process - from a wet collodion negative, he made positive albumen prints. The subjects were required to sit for quite a while, and they're rarely smiling - Victorian England was like that.

Dodgson staged elaborate costume dramas, such as St. George slaying the dragon, with children dressed up and posed accordingly. His intial portrait of Alice Liddell - the Alice - was as a beggar maid. She was one of Dodgson's favorite subjects, until her mother abruptly cut off all contact between the artist and the girl when Alice was 11 years old. The reasons for the break remain one of history's great mysteries and the source of much gossip.

Only one photograph of Alice Liddell is included in the DAI exhibition, that being a picture of her and her two sisters. Through Dodgson's novels, Alice became his most famous subject, though he photographed many celebrities of the day, including Prince Leopold and Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his family.

The collection, organized by the Harry Ransom Humanities Center at the University of Texas at Austin, expands the view of Dodgson/Carroll with examples of his papers in math and logic - which he taught at Christ Church College - and the acrostics and puzzles in which he took obvious delight.

It's an illuminating exhibit, an expansive look at one of history's most engimatic, complicated and multitalented artists.