Photographs help expose the faces behind racism in everyday life.

The eerie black-and-white images of cross burnings and hooded figures resemble documentation from a secret past.

But the dozen photographs that make up “The Klan: Photos from the Deep South,” part of a show at the South Bay Contemporary Museum of Art Annex, were shot just last year at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Pulaski, Tenn.

The photos by Nashville native Christine Larkin explore the anger, alienation and familiarity of klan members. The pictures are part of the museum’s “Contrast” exhibit, a show featuring traditional and experimental works by seven photographers, including several South Bay artists.

“I was trying to look at them as human beings,” Larkin said of her Southern subjects. “It is not just the ugly, awful people who are racist. It’s the beautiful people too. It could be your next-door neighbor. And if I can make these people seem more like your neighbors, then, hopefully, everyone will have to think a little more about (racism).

“Part of my whole purpose was to make people aware that this is a big issue,” she continued. “It’s still going on. . . . It’s not a thing of the past.”

Nor is it limited to the South. “The first klan member I met was wearing a California Klansmen T-shirt,” said Larkin, who studied at Stanford University.

Classically trained, Larkin’s portrayal of the klan is the 30-year-old’s first venture into photojournalism.

Dominating her show is a 28-by-40-inch print of a cross burning, klan members glowing in fiery light.

“I think it’s a little shocking because it’s so ‘In your face!’ ” she said. “And it’s something to see the women and the little (children in klan) robes.”

Also riveting is an emotionally charged image of a young man running through the street during a klan march, his hand raised in a Nazi salute.

“The show helps you look into their eyes and think about where their anger comes from,” Larkin said. “I found a lot of these people are folks who have been alienated in their culture and are trying to find another way to identify.”

“It made me think, ‘Well, what kind of prejudice do I have?’ ” she said. “We all have to confront whatever it is in us (that is intolerant.)”

Larkin hopes that her images of parents cradling their children and women smiling benignly in their klan hoods belie the stereotypes of the group. She recently returned to the South and hopes to document the family life of the klan this summer.

The “Contrast” show reveals a different side of the Deep South in Perry Walker’s “Graveyard Traveler” series, an exploration of images that re-examine landscapes and the human figure. The show also includes Geoff Guerrero’s work combining photographs with other media in his experimental art; Philip Shelton’s two-fold exhibit displaying primarily black-and-white portraits of artists with their work alongside a hand-tinted, solarized Zodiac Flowers series, and Terry Wimmer’s photographs showing personal compositions of objects that leave interpretation up to the viewer.

The public is invited to attend an informal dialogue with some of the photographers at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

What: “The Klan: Photos From the Deep South”

Where: South Bay Contemporary Museum of Art Annex, 5025 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance.

When: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. through June 20.

Admission: Free.

Information: (310) 375-3775.