“Office Door, Pulaski, Tennessee, 2006,” by Jessica Ingram.

Ingram’s caption for this image:

The Ku Klux Klan was originally founded in this law office on Christmas Eve, 1865. The original historical marker, which has since been bolted to the wall backwards, reads:

“Ku Klux Klan organized in this law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones December 24, 1865. Names of original organizers: Calvin E. Jones, John B. Kennedy, Frank O. McCord, John C. Lester, Richard R. Reed, James R. Crowe.”

I came across Ingram’s series, “A Civil Rights Memorial,” in No Caption Needed. Ingram’s photographs record the scenes of certain critical events in the history of the civil rights movement and document the absence or inadequacy of memorials or markers which might tell a passer-by or tourist what it was that happened there.

I always have difficulty with photography like this, which can only be correctly seen and understood in light of specific information which must either be had in advance or obtained at the same time as one sees the photograph. I can’t help feeling that the work is not really in the photograph but in the caption, as though this were a series of very short written works with photographic illustrations incidentally attached. Because of this, I cannot feel moved by the photographs, but only by the words, and a caption is not generally an adequate venue for profound communication. So I find myself curiously unmoved by Ingram’s work, and a bit embarrassed and frustrated about that fact.

To say that I am unmoved is not a criticism. This work — which is clearly valuable — could hardly have been conducted in any other way, because what it is documenting is of course the absence of evidence of the subject matter. Indeed, one could say that my own limited ability to react to these scenes is part of what Ingram is showing me: her photographs depict unremarkable scenes, but what they show is that in response to those scenes, I have an abstract itch where anger or sadness ought to be.