January 30, 2007

Armed America This isn't a book about guns. It's a book about people. Whether it's 39% or 50% of Americans, it's still an awful lot of people. I started wondering just who they were, what they looked like, and how they lived. . . . I realized that I could probably photograph a hundred people in two months, but it wasn't a number of people that was important, it was their stories -- a cowboy in Texas, a survivalist in Montana, a deer hunter in Pennsylvania, a sheriff in Georgia, a soldier in Idaho.... What I really needed, I realized, was to get moving, to drive across the country and find America somewhere between here and there. via J-Walk blog

Evocative portraits of people with their guns, dogs, fireplaces, etc. Photographed in their kitchens, doorways, living rooms, and other places that are part Walker Evans and part Diane Arbus. This is not intended to be a thread about the right-ness or wrong-ness of gun ownership (although some, if not all, is inevitable) but rather just about what the photographer states: the stories and pictures of the people in America who own guns.

posted by petebest 17 years ago
  • I love it how they've just utterly disregarded the point system at the firing range and gone straight for the head. I hate guns, but love the link petebest. Thanks.
  • "This isn't a book about guns. It's a book about people." No, it isn't. It is about an agenda.
  • > No, it isn't. It is about an agenda. Is it? It strikes me as noncommittal; just pictures of ordinary people with guns.
  • A book about people and their SUVs? A book about people and their Windows OS? It strikes me as noncommittal. That would be a book about people and their teapots. ;)
  • Teaist!
  • You can take my teapot when you ptry it from my cold, dead cozy.
  • What kind of monster would own a teapot? But yeah...I agree with stirfry. They shouldn't try to hide the fact that there's an agenda here, even if it is one I'm on board with.
  • I found those images to be a bit frightening. someone hold me The images are like - this is me and my gun. Got a problem with that?
  • So is the agenda simply "pro-gun" or is it something more? If they were "People and their SUVs" would it be "pro-SUV/anti-environment"? That is, is the agenda just pro-whatever's-in-the-picture? I don't see an agenda in the pictures although the reasoning for taking them or maybe how they will eventually be published or something may serve an agenda.
  • I want to make a picture book of all you people holding your agendas. I'll call it "Agenda Benders", on account of how you're all fucked-up perverts an' shit.
  • Can my cat, Kit Koko Renault be in it?
  • Sure, anything you want, freak-o.
  • Portia: I learned to shoot a gun when I was 10 or 11. My mother had a boyfriend who was a San Luis Obispo County Sherrif, and he lived in a teepee with a "wolf dog". We'd stay out there, eat ashcakes for breakfast and shoot his guns. ♪ la la la loo loo loo loo! ♪ Anthony: I own a gun because I'm a fuckin' American and a Marine. It's my God-given right. What gomichild said. Plus, many of these people did not tidy their homes before taking the photo.
  • I'm sorry that the book's already been sent to bed. Apparently the photographer came trolling 'round here a couple of months ago, and my wife's cute with a gun in her arms. She could have cradled a shotgun while I gave my best thousand-yard squint and the cats gamboled in the ammo or something. The untidied verismo thing probably would have been a deal-breaker, though.
  • I want to make a picture book of all you people holding your agendas. I'll call it "Agenda Benders" Listen up quido...I get real bent out of shape when people try to bend my upright agenda!
  • That is, is the agenda just pro-whatever's-in-the-picture? Both con and pro in that this book is looking for a reaction and is, in that sense, a troll-book. I agree with you that the Arbus flavor runs strong here. The difference being that her subjects weren't a part of an ongoing and rancorous kerfluffle. She could have cradled a shotgun while I gave my best thousand-yard squint and the cats gamboled in the ammo or something. Yeah...the book needs more American flags and dead Elk.
  • I love guns. I think that came with the testicles.
  • If the photographer just wanted to photograph people with guns, all that was needed was to go to a rural area like the one where I grew up. I would guess that 90% of households back home have them. When I took speech class we had to do an instructional speech and one of my classmates did his on how to clean a gun. He brought it to school and no one cared.
  • Actually, I'd say it's not a bad cross-section. Yeah, some of them are creepy red state types, but just as many aren't. Personally, I love finding old WW2-era long guns and restoring them. It's kinda like restoring old cars or antique furniture, except it's cheaper and goes boom when you're done.
  • If I lived in America, I'd be very tempted to own a gun: Mmmm - abhor violence and believe gun ownership exacerbates society's problems. But - it's a Heckler & Kock dude! How much, you say? Take credit cards?
  • > Both con and pro in that this book is looking for a reaction and is, in that sense, a troll-book. Um, aren't most books (and photographs) looking for a reaction? I'm a bit confused about the "agenda" mentioned above - the reactions that the pictures and quotations are provoking are neither predominantly negative nor predominantly positive. They seem fairly balanced. I find it interesting how many people say that they keep guns for home protection. I grew up around guns for hunting and competitive shooting, and a lot of families I knew kept shotguns. I learned to shoot quite young and did some target shooting in my teens. I haven't the least desire to own a gun or keep one in the house, but I also don't expect to need one. If someone came into my house with a decent gun, they'd already be in possession of the most expensive object. Also, burglars in Europe tend to be unarmed.
  • The right to bear arms? or the right to arm bears? I'd go for the latter any time
  • If you make a book where people who own guns talk about what they like about their guns, it's probably going to be pro-gun. Now, if he'd taken these qualitative interviews and turned them into quantitative questions, compressed the results of those into some nice graphs and wrote an interesting theory about it...
  • I don't mind a bit o'gun, but only fire them on a range or somewhere far away from anyone. And they are locked up in-between times. Yass.
  • I quite like archery.
  • Who needs a gun when you've got killah skillz like me?
  • *raises eyebrows and looks down nose at quid*
  • I quite like archery. Yeah, me too. That Jughead guy is a hoot!
  • Hey hey I'll do the malapropisms around here buddy.
  • the reactions that the pictures and quotations are provoking are neither predominantly negative nor predominantly positive. They seem fairly balanced. I'd get all Michael Moore-ish in this thread, but I haven't the energy. *once had a job requiring the firing of sub machine guns*
  • The right to bear arms? or the right to arm bears? I'd go for the latter any time Zaphod, choose one of the following: 1 - You are a complete and total ignoramus. 2 - You are not familiar with the destruction rendered by Iorek and other such armed bears in the His Dark Materials books. 3 - Both of the above.
  • *once had a job requiring the firing of sub machine guns* Elementary school teacher?
  • I once had a job that required me to always carry a concealed Beretta 418 or Walther PPK and also to have frequent, loveless sex with incredibly beautiful women. But the health coverage sucked, so I became a web developer.
  • My dad owns a few antique shotguns that he takes out to shoot skeet from time to time. (I've asked him why he has such a grudge against skeet, and he just answers that "Those darn skeet just need to die!" Heh.) My mom's rule is that he can have all the guns he wants in the house, but no ammo. As my mom explains, she's not anti-gun, but anti-bullet.
  • Cheesh, why can't we just have a nice, simple book of wholesome country folk and their exposed genitalia?
  • But, but... those are my exposed genitalia.
  • You'll pry my decomposing genitalia from my ... oh, you know the drill