Photographs can transport you into, and out of, time. “Rev. King in Boston” funnels you straight back to the mid-’60s and everything we now associate with the face and gestures of Martin Luther King Jr.: the struggle for racial equality, nonviolent resistance, a reaching toward something. “Waiting” — showing African-Americans registering to vote in Mississippi in 1964 — is equally a document of that time, but there’s something compellingly timeless about the look of determination on the face of the man in the white hat.
Both photos, as well as the action shot of basketball great Bill Russell, were taken by prolific photojournalist Ted Polumbaum. A selection of his work, some derived from Time magazine assignments to cover civil-rights events in 1964 and 1968 and augmented with other work, will be shown in the Summerlin Library, under the title Lives on the Line: Civil Rights Images, beginning January 17. It was curated by his daughter, Judy Polumbaum, a Las Vegan.
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