Label Text:
Klansman, Knighthawk of Georgia V features an icon of extreme racial prejudice: the white hood of a member of the Ku Klux Klan, shown dramatically at profile. Initially, Serrano was attracted to this subject by a desire to make an unusual portrait—a portrait of someone wearing a mask—but he became intrigued by the suprising vulnerability of his sitters. In an interview, he noted, “Once they put on the masks and the robes they assumed a power . . . not visible when they didn’t have those clothes on.” While the scale and formal portrait pose of this photograph lend the figure an aura of power, Serrano subverts this by cropping the photograph below the sitter’s eye. Serrano’s unusual framing focuses on the hood, highlighting it as a source of power and turning it into an object for contemplation and an abstract shape against a nondescript background.
MD, 2011
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2011.13 |
