Guns In America
After my father passed away in 2007 and as I was going through his possessions, I came across 3 vintage handguns I never knew he had. Given the violence in this country’s current history, I was undecided at the time as to what to do with them. Torn between the fact they belonged to my dad and my feelings regarding US policy on gun control, I decided to just put them in a lock box and store them in the basement until I was in a clearer mind-set to make a good decision.
Jump ahead to late 2012 and the Sandy Hook shooting. My good friend and fellow photographer planned a road trip to do some shooting of our own, only with cameras. As was the custom with our travels, it provided a lot of time to talk. Music, family, photography, movies and the latest news were always part of our drives. The horrifying murders in Connecticut had recently happened and we were both depressed about the current state of affairs in our country. It occurred to me then, that I had never dealt with my father’s guns and I suddenly felt hypocritical having them. I told my friend this and that I was ready to get rid of them. After a few moments of silence his reply was, “before you do, you should photograph them”.
Jump ahead to early 2013. I had just treated myself to a year lease on a studio in Pioneer Square, Seattle, not really knowing what I was even going to do with it. After 35 years of commercial work, I never had a studio, as my assignments were always on location.
Pacing around an empty space is intimidating to me, as there is then the responsibility to fill it. One day the conversation with my buddy came to mind and the next morning, I brought the guns to the studio and laid them out on the worktable. I basically just circled and stared at them for days. I didn’t have any emotional connection with them at all. I didn’t even know my dad had guns. I gradually brought out strobes and tried different approaches in black and white, but they all left me feeling indifferent. I had recently found a piece of rusty, painted metal that I planned to use for a portrait. It was square with a round yellow flaking shape in the middle. I laid the gun on top and took a test shot in color. It was then that something snapped. The image still didn’t really communicate anything to me, (other than being pretty) but I felt that I was going in the right direction. I would go on to use the guns illustrating my thoughts on the absence of sane policy in the United States. For the rest of that year, I spent hours upon hours wandering antique stores and junkyards looking for props to build the sets. The lighting became a paramount component of the 18 images that followed; harsh light, both frontal and from the side, with loud, tweaked and saturated colors.
The images are not subtle. Nor is the subject matter and the violence that we face every single day.