A similarly-horned, although far more subdued, figure appears in Jenna Garrett’s series Teeth of the Wolf. Straddling a horse, the figure wears a black hood over his face, with white-rimmed holes for his eyes and mouth. Two conical, tasseled horns emerge from the hood. The man is the descendant of a Bald Knobber, a vigilante group which emerged during the Civil War in southwest Missouri. Founded in 1885 as a way for civilians to protect themselves against gangs, the group grew to around five hundred members, and were responsible for countless murders, robbings and acts of arson: they became the problem they sought to protect against. Despite disbanding in 1889, the group's legacy has lived on, through a small but sustained tourism industry. The theme park rides and country music acts which have proliferated tend to ignore the violent history of the vigilant group, instead painting them as quirky folk heroes.  

It is this twisting, flattening and commercialisation of history which drew initially Jenna Garrett to the subject. Her series uses the Bald Knobbers as a tool through which she examines America’s relationship to vigilantism, and its historically violent politics. Through Garrett’s lens, the machismo, pageantry and brutality of American politics today is drawn into sharp focus, presented not as a rogue outlier but as an omnipresent force. 

JENNA GARRETT is an artist living in San Francisco, California, USA. Her practice focuses on the Ozark mountains in southwest Missouri where she was born. She is interested in nationalism, mythmaking, and its consequences in American culture. Garrett’s work has been shown at the Aperture Gallery, Bristol Photo Festival, Format Festival, Glaz Photo Festival, and Photoville. She is a Format25 Photo Festival Winner, Aperture Portfolio Prize Longlist recipient 2024, PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant Shortlist recipient 2024, and a Silver Eye Fellowship Award Honoree 2022. Garrett holds a Masters in fine art photography from the London College of Communication. 

ISABEL WALTER is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam. She currently works as Assistant Curator at Foam, and Editorial Assistant at Foam Magazine. She is particularly interested in art which expands the technical and conceptual boundaries of photography, moving image and new technologies.