The 1965 Selma photograph with no faces in it: why James Karales' camera turned away from the hero shot and focused on the sky

A dense, dark storm cloud looms over a long line of silhouetted marchers carrying American flags as they walk along a ridge during the Selma to Montgomery march.

Scroll through the coverage of the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rightsmarch and you'll find plenty of close, urgent pictures. Clenched jaws. Raised placards. Martin Luther King mid-stride at the front of the crowd. James Karales' contribution to that archive, now touring as part of Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder, does something dramatically different.

Rather than focus on faces, Karales stepped back, dropped low and let a vast, roiling thunderhead swallow two-thirds of the frame. The marchers become a ribbon of silhouettes along the bottom edge, faceless, anonymous; their only individual detail a hat brim here or a raised flag there. On paper, it really shouldn't work as well as it does. And that's exactly why it's worth studying.