The nationwide rallies this week calling for equal rights for immigrants both legal and illegal made for some stunning pictures, as hundreds of thousands of marchers turned out in cities across the US. The experience has Philip Kennicott thinking about the meaning of crowds, and the sometimes contradictory ideas they embody. “The crowd image generally reflects the latent fears inspired by those who have gathered in the streets… Just as the eye scans the multitudes in a Bruegel painting, the lens scans the crowd, and finds it festive or restive, attentive or dull, emotional or over-passionate. But those are really metaphors: The individual stands for the crowd.”