The project came together in early 2018. Well, sort of. Mr. Thomas and Ms. Shur planned to shoot the tableaus at the “Into Action” festival in downtown Los Angeles in January. But the morning of the shoot, they lost their space. “The logistics were crazy,” Ms. Shur said. “He has the ideas and I have to execute.” They were prepared to drop the project altogether, but within hours Mr. Thomas found an empty studio across the street.

That weekend a parade of people streamed through the front doors to be photographed for recreations of Mr. Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Worship.” The actress Rosario Dawson showed up. So, too, did the rapper Chuck D, a founder of Public Enemy. Mr. Thomas said Gina Belafonte, the daughter of the actor and activist Harry Belafonte, came with a group of ecumenical leaders. Even Dolores Huerta, a co-founder of the United Farm Workers with the activist Cesar Chavez, stopped by. By the end of the weekend, more than 150 people had been photographed, Mr. Thomas said. They became the underpinnings for the final photographic compilations.

“All of these people have their own communities,” he said of those photographed. “Everyone wants to be a good person. The demonizing of people doesn’t help.”

That’s what led Maggie Meiners, an artist from suburban Chicago, to create a series of her own. In 2008, she visited the Norman Rockwell Museum with her husband and was struck by the elderly couple at the head of the table in “Freedom From Want.” That year, Californians had voted to overturn an earlier decision of the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.