The Darkest Light

An example not on display is "a murdered 3-year-old little boy whose face has been smashed," according to Leslie Thomas, who curated the exhibit.

This, then, is a non-offensive version of genocide. But while graphic horror has been expunged, bigness itself is a quality that might contribute an intensity to the effect. America discovered that a long time ago at the drive-in movie theater: John Wayne bloodlessly dispatching bad guys, the impact shared simultaneously by the occupants of 600 cars.

Here, the communal experience of vast, albeit still, portraits invites a relationship between viewers and subject that is unavailable from just flipping through a magazine or watching a news broadcast.

The portraits, interspersed with wider shots of destruction and guns, are especially moving. The photographers and the curators wanted to convey not just the plight of these people but also their individuality. Dressed in colorful shawls, with weathered faces, they fix you in their huge gaze. You might wish the images didn't flash so quickly, so you could study them.

But like the movies or a slide show, this representation of genocide is ephemeral. It vanishes when the lights go out at midnight, while the real thing goes on.

By the time the images appeared for the first time last night, delayed by speeches inside, it was almost 7:30. The sidewalks were nearly deserted. The audience was primarily folks who came on purpose to confront Darfur. It was hard to predict what effect, if any, this will have on people who stumble on it by accident.

Gaye Whyte met up after work with a friend, Nancy O'Neill, to come down to see the exhibit.

"They're huge images," said O'Neill, director of programs for an association of colleges. "It's hard to glance at it and walk away from it like an image in a magazine."

The photos of boys with guns most touched Whyte, publications production manager for a federal agency. "It shatters you," she said. "These are children who have been robbed of a life. There's no childhood here."

O'Neill said seeing the pictures made her want to go inside for caption information -- which pointed up one trade-off with this monumental outdoor presentation: There was no caption information inside, or outside. (Some is available on the museum Web site, http://www.ushmm.org.)

Several of the big images could have used some words. It was fascinating to stand next to photographer Mark Brecke and have him narrate some of the photos he took: Here, a woman swearing on a Koran that she was a genuine refugee and therefore entitled to food; there, the astonished face of a youth holding a gun after a government attack.

But without words this was a different kind of information: big, vivid, visceral, pictoral, mute.

"The question is," said photographer Ron Haviv, "What does the public do with that information?"