Forbidden Images

by J. Ross Baughman

Photography: America’s Closet Our society prides itself on being inclusive. We invite the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. "Our motto is E pluribus unum. But there are, inevitably, outcasts and outsiders – those we will not tolerate in our company, and those who seek their own society outside the mainstream. Forced underground, many such formal and informal groups lurk on the fringes of our awareness, often the objects of our fear and hostility. In his latest book of photographs, Forbidden Images, a secret portfolio (Cambric Press, $5), J. Ross Baughman examines several of these fringe groups through a series of short photo essays. Each essay provides a special jolt to our sensibilities. Taken together they provide important food for thought. The first essay concerns the most organized of the groups, the Ku Klux Klan. Baughman, a KSU graduate whose work appears regularly in The Lorain Journal and occasionally in this magazine, shows us a group of Ohio and Virgin