From Harpers Magazine, February 19, 1868
Photojournalist Anthony Karen has published recent KKK photographs he took for the London Independent. It makes me wonder if things ever really change. Click here for link to Anthony Karen's photo essay on the KKK.
Also see dream act texas post "The Reality of the KKK in Virginia," September 16, 2007
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America unmasked: The images that reveal the Ku Klux Klan is alive and kicking in 2009
The USA has a new president but an old problem - and nothing typifies it like today’s Ku Klux Klan. The photographer Anthony Karen gained unprecedented access to the ‘Invisible Empire’
Words by Leonard Doyle
London Independent
Saturday, 21 February 2009
These images show members of the Ku Klux Klan as they want to be seen, scary and secretive and waiting in the wings for Barack and his colour-blind vision for America to fail. Anthony Karen, a former Marine and self-taught photojournalist was granted access to the innermost sanctum of the Klan. He doesn’t tell us how he did it but he was considered trustworthy enough to be invited into their homes and allowed to photograph their most secretive ceremonies, such as the infamous cross burnings.
When he talks about the Klan members he has encountered he tends not to dwell on the fate of their victims. Karen’s feat is that he takes us to places few photojournalists have been before, into the belly of the beast. The scenes he presents portray a kinder, gentler Klan. The mute photographs present an organisation that is far less threatening than the hate group of our popular imagination. Consciously or otherwise, his photographs hold our imagination in their grip while doing double duty as propaganda for the extremist right, much as Leni Riefenstahl’s work did for the Nazis. more
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