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News

Artist captures town's soul

Photographer Dave Anderson says Vidor's ties to the 
Ku Klux Klan are in the past

by GUILHERME CUNHA
The Daily Cougar

An award-winning photographer said in a talk Monday that Vidor, a town long known as a hotbed for racial discrimination and Ku Klux Klan influence, has tried to leave its troubled past behind.

Dave Anderson described Vidor, located near Beaumont, as a poverty-stricken community in his book Rough Beauty.

"I didn't really end up digging around for the Klan. I got more interested in the people I was meeting," Anderson said at the talk in Farish Hall. "I kind of came to the conclusion that the Klan days were past in Vidor. What this project became to me was a place that I had a lot of admiration for. I felt a real respect."

Anderson made a series of visits to Vidor from fall 2003 to summer 2006 

Though Anderson said he originally intended to unmask a Klan town, the degree to which poor, white America has been neglected changed his focus.

"This project is just a minefield focusing on an element that some people might say it is a very difficult way of living. Vidor is a working man's town. There is always focus on poverty," he said. "Certainly there is a lot of poverty, but also there are a lot of kids playing. Many of the people were rock-solid folks."

Austin Smith, associate director of the Texas Learning and Computation Center, which co-sponsored the event with Watermark Fine Art Photographs and Books, said the photographer brought the town to life through his art.

"I feel Anderson showed the human aspect of Vidor … giving us an honest, unbiased glimpse into the locals' lives," he said. "He showed there is more to the town of Vidor than the easy label of a Klan town, revealing the ‘art' of (citizens') daily lives.

"He gives dimension to their personalities and shows how much we have in common with them. I think that is why people from across the country can relate so well to his images."

One of Anderson's last photographs was of an old burned cross from a Klan ritual -- it was the only KKK-related photograph in the collection. He described the picture as the thing that no one wants to talk about but that can't be avoided -- a memory of a distant past. 

Anderson has also worked in President Clinton's communication and media affairs office and with MTV's Choose or Lose voter registration campaign. Anderson's work has been featured in several publications, including Esquire and Stern.

Watermark, 3503 Lake St., will display a selection of photographs from Rough Beauty through March 21.

Jerome Crowder, assistant professor of anthropology, announced at the talk the first UH visual studies course will be taught in the fall through the Department of Anthropology. For more information on visual studies at UH, visit www.visualstudies.uh.edu. 

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