[Leica] guns, photography, and the american psychosis

[kcassidy at asc.upenn.edu (Kyle Cassidy)]

Steve brings up some very real and interesting points, all of which I've
been thinking about a great deal over the last year. Certianly my
photographic moods have taken various twists and turns since I joined
this group in 1998. I've photographed goth models, people who cut
themselves, people with tattoos, and various other little things along
the way, and I did each as long as it was alive in my mind and when it
started to get old, I moved on. And it happens that during this
particular project, with the invaluable help of some people on this
list, I should mention, I convinced a publisher that they should pay me
to keep doing this. The opportunity and financial ability to keep doing
it has served to keep it interesting longer -- it gave me the ability to
work not in my immediate area, but to drive across the country and meet
people -- which is really very exciting to me. Had a publisher gotten
behind me to keep photographing cutters, or got me back to romania to
photograph the kids in the sewers, I would have been just as happy. I
took pictures before they paid me, and I'll take pictures when they
stop. I suspect that Steve's not a doctor for the money, rather that
healing is part of his nature, but that occasionally the money suggests
a direction -- where to live, what to practice -- and so move we all.
The money doesn't give you the drive, just the ability to keep at it and
keep yourself in film.

As for the tiny slice of psychopathology -- it's not that tiny, it's
nearly half of every single house in this country and, as Jim pointed
out, why does nobody talk about it? If one want to talk about tiny
slices of psychopathology, we could talk about leica camera ownership.
One of the things that did fascinate me about it from the beginning is
that nobody talks about it, or at least nobody that I know. Subcultures
I find fascinating. Had I driven across the country photographing the
main stream ("100 portraits of people who live in houses!") it probably
wouldn't have interested me as much, though, in some parts of this
country (Lousiana and Wisconsin for example) Gun Culture is not a
subculture, it is indeed the Predominant Culture -- you can just to door
to door, introduce yourself, and start photographing.

As to whether or not this is doccumentary photography, I'll leave for
art critics to say. I was very motivated by Mary Ellen Mark's
photographs of the Aryan Nation in Idaho. Looking at her photos years
ago I found myself thinking "holy smokes, this woman looks like she
works in a Dairy Queen"
(http://sapere.alice.it/gallery/Mary_Ellen_Mark/zoom1.html) I was very
impressed that Mary Ellen wasn't influenced by the costumery, or the
rhetoric, she took a portrait like she'd take any other. That made me
realize that these women might, in fact, work at the Dairy Queen after
all, and that they have kids, and go to the park, and live in a house,
and whatever else. Seeing the face behind the mask made me very curious
about all the other faces and all the other masks -- business executives
who dress in leather and ride harley's on the weekends, Mild Mannered
men who pay women to beat them up, Star Trek fans, groupies -- Secret
Identities.

Going into this I had two main criteria: 

1) I'd photograph anybody who was willing to be photographed whom I
could physically get to. Nobody got preference, nobody got cut, to get
in, all you had to do was have a gun, let me come over, and sign a model
release. I've had waaaay more opportunity, (volunteers) than I've had
the ability to get to and limits on paper and book prices have limited
this to 100 portraits, which I think is a pretty decent size -- most
photo books seem to hover between 50 and 75.

2) I was going to treat every portrait as if there were no guns in it.
I'd treat this as an assignment to photograph people in their new homes.
Or, as it turned out to be -- people and their pets. My thought was that
by doing this, It would present the gun issue in a larger context. I'm
not interested in guns -- I'm interested in people -- what are these
people like? What are their lives like? I thought the best way to find
out was to look at where they live. Some of them have a big relationship
with guns, some have guns they haven't taken out of the closet in
fifteen years, some of them don't like guns at all -- but they're all
part of those 4 in 10 american households. Some of these people have
sinnister portraits because they look stern and live in a foreboding
enviornment, some of these people look cute and harmless because they
smile a lot and live in cute and harmless looking houses. Some people
are messy, some are neat freaks.

Certianly this project gets clipping at the top and the bottom end of
the spectrum. Many people on the left wings don't want their neighbors
to know they have guns. Many people on the right think that I'm working
for either Sarah Brady, producing a book that ridicules gun owners, or
that I'm working for the ATF compiling a list of people who own guns for
the Great Confiscation. In fact, so vociferous has been the noise from
the very hardest core of the gun culture threatening to kick my ass for
producing anti-gun propaganda that my publisher freaked out and made
sure that I got an unlisted phone number.

I suspect that everyone gets out of this something flavored by what they
came in with, and that's what I'm interested in hearing about, other
people's reaction. So far, it's kept people talking and I think that, in
my mind at least, makes it successful.