Untitled 1982 - 1984

William Christenberry made this unsettling, untitled photograph sometime in the late 20th century. It shows a Ku Klux Klan uniform, presented with a kind of stark, almost clinical directness. What's so striking is the way the material qualities of the fabric are rendered in such detail. The sheen of the satin hood, the way it catches the light, almost makes it seem like a ghostly apparition. See those two eyeholes? The stitching around them is so delicate, so precise. It's as if Christenberry is forcing us to confront the banality of evil, the way something so hateful can be constructed with such care, such attention to detail. Christenberry spent much of his career grappling with the complex, often painful history of the American South. You might think of the way Walker Evans photographed the everyday realities of the Depression era, unflinching and direct. This photograph, for me, is equally powerful in its simplicity, in its refusal to look away.