life:

On this day in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan was founded. The Klan, of course, has had a hand in some of the nation’s most infamous acts of racial terror and murder…

But what does the KKK look like today? Photographer Anthony Karen has documented the modern-day Klan in their homes, at rallies, and at Klan gatherings, taking us deep inside a world we would otherwise never see — a world most of us might not even want to know about

“The couple got married the day before hurricane Gustav made landfall in Louisiana in 2008,” Karen says of the newlyweds portrayed here. “It was a traditional Klan ceremony, with vows exchanged in front of a fiery cross, performed at a remote hunting camp in the middle of a nature preserve. The bride was dead-set on taking her wedding portrait with cypress trees in the background, so she put her husband and me on the back of an ATV and took us on a death-defying ride to find the perfect spot.”

(see more — LIFE Goes Inside Today’s KKK)