[Leica] guns, photography, and the american psychosis

[jgovindaraj at eth.net (Jayanand Govindaraj)]

Kyle,
I think its a brilliant series, and truly frightening for those not used 
to guns (like me!), that this a predominant culture.   However much you 
humanize them, it still comes across as chilling, at least to me. But 
again, the photographs are compelling. My interactions with the USA and 
its culture has been largely on the coasts, and large urban centres, and 
my reactions probably show this.
Cheers
Jayanand

Kyle Cassidy wrote:

>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.
>
>
>
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