This show featuring photographers Jim Naughten of London and Fabrice Monteiro of Dakar is called Signares and Hereros. Take Hereros, the people of the Namib Desert. In 1904, they rose up against their German colonizers and badly lost. But they adopted a battle tradition: donning German uniforms for the few Germans they killed. They continue the costuming today, as Naughten’s portraits depict. Nothing happens in the pictures, except the reactivation of the past. As Obama suggested in his Trayvon Martin speech, some Americans prefer to see present crimes divorced from past ones. (M.I.A. Gallery, 1203A Second Ave, m-i-a-gallery.com, 11 am–6 pm, free, through Aug 30)