NEW YORK—Two current shows by north European photographers, on view this month in New York, seem very different at first sight. But as it turns out, they have a good deal in common—and what is more, they aid in an appreciation of one another.

In the big, clean spare galleries of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s third floor, you’ll find about 30 big, clean spare photographs by Norwegian Tom Sandberg, an artist who is new to the city. (This is his first solo show in the United States, and it runs through April 23.)

While his prints are technically similar—in large sizes, often grainy and a little darker than what might be thought of as classically “correct”—his subject matter is unsettlingly wide-ranging: cloud formations and mountain ranges as seen from an airplane, a man looking out of an airplane window, the ghostly shadow of a house seen through thick fog, a prone naked woman, a baby on a beach face down on a towel, a man’s hand on a railing.

But they are all the work of the same artistic intelligence—though he doesn’t make the connection obvious. Each of his prints is left as Untitled, which gives one the sense that Sandberg rather relishes the enigmatic.

The first clue to his vision comes through that man’s hand on the railing. It’s a gentle hand, the fingers hardly curved over the surface that they touch, and the picture suggests that this moment of touching is reassuring. It is a point of contact with the physical world and a means of comprehending and possessing it.

Perhaps for Sandberg, what is even more important than touching is seeing. In the main gallery space at P.S.1, there is a wonderful large-scale print, hung high on the wall, depicting a nose and a pair of eyes (behind Warhol-esque dark glasses) that seem to survey the room and possess everything in it.

It seems to me that that is what these photographs are about: the way we can comprehend, giving equality to and possess the vast range of things that exist in the world simply by the very act of seeing them.

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It was while looking at Bert Teunissen’s photographs at Aperture Gallery that I gained a sense of how to appreciate Sandberg’s work.

While Sandberg’s pictures range wildly in subject and appearance, Teunissen’s current project, “Domestic Landscapes,” on view through May 10, produces pictures that adhere to a rigid formula. Put simply, they present people in their homes—mostly old people and always old homes.

Teunissen’s mission has been to record those fast-disappearing, mostly rustic accommodations that remind him of the rural Dutch house he lived in until he was 9 years old. He has traveled the length and breadth of Europe seeking out such places, and though they differ enormously in many ways, their similarities are striking.

He has recorded old folks “making do,” staring at the camera with varying degrees of unease, while around them are ugly plumbing and electrical wiring, picture calendars given inexplicable pride of place, dreadful shop-bought decorations (like tiles and wallpaper, tablecloths, bedclothes and curtains) and, most obvious of all, the dark, impoverished inadequacy of the places in which these people are seeing out their lives.

The whole experience should be deeply depressing, but actually, it’s quite the reverse.

Teunissen’s exhibition and gorgeous accompanying book (and his Web site, where the whole project of more than 350 pictures can be viewed), present a testimony to the human spirit.

These people are determined. They keep their homes ordered, they stay warm, they love their pets, but most of all—and rather like Tom Sandberg—they define themselves by the things they possess: family photographs, religious icons, cooking utensils, clocks and ancient radios, decorative plates, sports trophies, toys and ornaments. Those items that provide tangible and visible connections to the life they have led—and to life in general.