A gold necklace can be a pretty thing. But a missing gold necklace is something more interesting. It is a story.

Daniel Terna, 28, found himself drawn into this story two years ago, walking through Manhattan’s diamond district during the High Holy Days, when the stores, most of them owned by Jews, were closed. “All the jewelry was missing from the storefronts,” he said. “It looked like they had been robbed by a very considerate thief.”

Mr. Terna, a photographer, had never been attracted by the bling that usually fills the district’s windows. But its absence spoke to him: the velvet or suede busts suddenly unburdened of their adornments, wearing only the faint imprints of the baubles to which they normally played second fiddle. Instead of absence, Mr. Terna found a presence that had previously escaped him.

“They looked so sculptural to me,” he said. The busts were a serene population unto themselves, regal in color and posture, detached from the ordinary hustle of West 47th Street, with its garish promises of treasures bought or sold.