Caitlin Campbell

HANNAH MESSKOUB

boy sits behind a sign that prohibits all non-whites from entering his property and warns, “We don't call 911.” A one-week-old baby is cradled amidst hooded figures at a rally. A child gazes indifferently at the stuffed “Homies” doll that he has just hung by the neck from a tree.

These are hardly the images that you'd expect to find at a religious museum, yet they were on display this spring at St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Art and Artifacts in Glasgow, Scotland, as part of the exhibition “Generation KKK: Passing the Torch.” The museum houses artifacts from a range of faiths, with Dali's serenely surrealistic “Christ of St. John” sharing a galley with a dancing Shiva and overlooking a Zen garden. In another hall, artifacts from major religions have been grouped together under themes including “Birth,” “Marriage,” and “Death,” suggesting a human commonality that transcends specific practices and beliefs. The museum's stated aim is “to promote mutual understanding and respect between people of different faiths and people of no faith.” In pursuit of this goal, it avoids explicit criticism of the objects and images that confront visitors, not excepting female circumcision or, with this recent exhibition, the Ku Klux Klan. Museum curator Alison Kelly attributes the inclusion of these images to a responsibility to reveal instances when religion is used as “a tool to justify separation, segregation.” There's a certain intrepidness to a religious museum that acknowledges religion's misuse.

“Generation KKK” is the work of photojournalist James Edward Bates of the Zuma Press and is the result of an eight-year project for which Bates, a native Mississippian, returned to the American South. Explaining the project's lengthy duration, Bates says, “I [was] trying to document a way of life in detail. That takes trust and it takes time.” To cultivate this trust and to attain a level of access that Bates characterizes as “incredible,” Bates spent five months interviewing a KKK leader before initiating photography, respected requests that certain images and individuals not be photographed, and asked the newspaper he worked for, which was disliked by the KKK, to send another photographer to take images of a rally so he could avoid compromising his independence on the project. In spite of these efforts, the trust wavered at times. Bates describes how the father of the child hanging the “Homies” doll “threatened my life for showing the photograph, [he] actually pulled a gun on me.”

The collection, previously displayed at France's Visa Pour L'Image, consists of stark, beautifully photographed black and white images of what is often considered the ugliest facet of American society. Many of the photographs show practices commonly associated with the KKK, such as rallies and cross burnings. The more shocking and, given the title, thematically central images are those that portray the indoctrination of children into the culture and rituals of the KKK.

In spite of the museum's admirable goals in housing the exhibition, it is arguably counterproductive to combat hate by showing images of a hate group which is only too glad of the publicity. Kelly characterizes the public's reaction as generally positive, and a quick perusal of the guest book reveals comments like “brave” and “disturbing,” but also remarks such as “land of the free?” To visitors from most of the world, the KKK portrayed in the exhibition seems much more potent than it is. The KKK moves from the periphery of America and becomes a defining segment of society. St. Mungo's curators have taken steps to connect the KKK to Scotland, stuffing a folder with newspaper clippings and government press releases on racial tension and hate crimes in the United Kingdom in what Kelly calls an attempt to “explore our society and look within ourselves for racism and racist attitudes,” which are “very much here today in Glasgow.” Yet, the guest book reveals that to some visitors racism seems to be a distinctly American problem.

There's also a question of aestheticization. Bates aims for objectivity, maintaining, “It is not my place to judge either side of this or any issue. Certainly, I have an opinion, but it is my responsibility as a photojournalist to document life as it happens before me.” Yet, it is undeniable that everything and everyone looks better when well-framed and dramatically captured in black and white. Photojournalism, with its conflation of the relevant and the beautiful, cannot help but elevate its subject. Similarly, the act of placing these photos in a museum acknowledges that the object, and therefore its subject, is in some way worthy of attention.

The implied, uncomfortable question here is of course: Given that all publicity is good publicity, should these images be seen? In particular, should they be seen abroad, where they take on a different life than they would in the United States? The predictable, knee-jerk liberal response is to claim that of course they should be seen, that silencing issues only exacerbates them. And that's probably about right. The difficulty faced by Americans abroad in reaching that conclusion is a testament to Bates' success in meeting his stated goals. With his photographs, he aims to “stir emotions from which comes awareness.” If “Generation KKK” stirs sufficient outrage and shame that even a very liberal visitor gives serious, if brief, consideration to the virtues of censorship, then it becomes even more obvious that these are images that must be seen and issues that must be acknowledged and discussed.