A young boy in KKK robes sees his reflection in a riot shield held by an African-American state trooper.

A young boy in KKK robes sees his reflection in a riot shield held by an African-American state trooper.

No one who sees the photo soon forgets it: A small boy, about 3 years old, dressed in a child-sized Ku Klux Klan robe and pointed hat, reaches out to touch his reflection in a riot shield as the African-American trooper holding the shield looks down at him.

It was a fleeting moment away from the main action during a Barrow County Ku Klux Klan group’s rally on Sept. 5, 1992, in downtown Gainesville, and just before the little boy’s mother pulled him away.

Robertson, a 1991 graduate of the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, was trying to make it as a freelance photographer then, shooting for Gainesville’s The Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other north Georgia publications.

The photo might not have been published; an editor told Robertson the staff photographer’s images were fine and they wouldn’t need his freelance shots. But once a managing editor saw the photo, the paper published it in its Sunday edition, on the front of the local news section.

Robertson’s image then picked up some notice. It won a photography award, and other newspapers, including some European tabloids, picked it up from the Associated Press wire, Robertson recently recalled.

The anti-racism Southern Poverty Law Center also noticed, and featured the photograph (with Robertson’s permission) for many years on the cover of one of the center’s publications.

“The raw, untutored curiosity of that child and the sympathy in the face of that trooper just spoke to what we are as human beings before our minds are poisoned,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the law center. For years and years we have gotten calls and letters and emails about that photograph. It says something about what it means to be human.”

Recently, many people have discovered the image through Facebook and other social media.

“It’s been around a lot, but it’s seemed to pick up new legs after all these years,” Robertson said in a telephone interview.

A recent online article by The Poynter Institute’s David Griner has generated even more interest. Griner tracked down Robertson to Gainesville, where Robertson works with his father in the family business, Area Decor. The company makes and installs commercial and residential cabinets and countertops, Robertson said.

“I tried my best to make a living at (photography),” Robertson said. “I was a freelancer at the time. I was trying to build a portfolio. It’s kind of a secondary thing to me now, which kind of surprises people.”

Now married and the father of 12-year-old twins, Robertson still owns cameras, but mostly takes just snapshots, he said.

Robertson’s Klan photograph is a lot more than a snapshot, though, said Sidney Monroe, co-owner with his wife, Michelle, of the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M. The couple moved their business from downtown New York City after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The gallery specializes in black-and-white prints, emphasizing documentary photography and photojournalism.

Robertson’s photo is in color, but it belongs with the Monroe Gallery’s other great images, said Sidney Monroe, who hopes to reach an agreement with Robertson to sell prints of the photo in the gallery. The photographers represented in the gallery include outstanding current and young photographers, as well as great names such as Ruth Orkin, Robert Doisneau, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White and Neil Leifer.

“When we saw Todd’s photo, it immediately resonated with us,” Sidney Monroe said. “The image is very arresting, but also because it is sort of symbolic, and ironic because the Ku Klux Klan is still there, real as day. There’s just so much in that picture.”

The photo, Robertson said, contains a still relevant social message.

“It shows that hate is learned,” Robertson said. “Those kids didn’t know the difference between that day and any other day.”

The photographer got the name of the trooper in the photograph - Allen Campbell, now retired after a career in the Georgia State Patrol. Campbell turned down interview requests last week, but said he would meet with reporters Tuesday.

Robertson couldn’t get a full name for the little boy in the photograph.

“The only name I ever got was Josh,” said Robertson. “I’d kind of like to know what happened to him.”