Lutheran Pastor Don Marxhausen, above, and Evangelical Pastor George Kirsten, below, for Newsweek.  Both pastors were involved in the fallout after the Columbine shootings.  Marxhausen performed the funeral for shooter Dylan Klebold and spoke on behalf of the Klebold family, a move which would see him pushed from his church.  Kirsten presided over the funeral of Cassie Bernall, one of the Columbine victims who, according to rumors during the shooting, was killed after professing her belief in God; the rumor later proved false though the metaphorical aspect of the story has continued to inspire evangelicals.  Kirsten, a Vietnam pilot who survived a helicopter crash as well as a devastating explosion that claimed the lives of many of his comrades, was diagnosed with PTSD following the shootings.  Read more here.

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Really enjoyed my time with these two men –particularly Pastor Marxhausen.  I had been in Wyoming shooting for the early part of the week, making use of almost every waking hour on the story I had been commissioned to photograph.  I met Marxhausen and his wife after shooting from dawn until early afternoon before making a six hour drive back to Denver for the portrait.  Tired as the drive left me, it was really the first time I’d revisited the subject of Columbine since going to the school late in the afternoon on the day of the shooting.  In my past life I worked for an ambulance company based a little over two miles from the school and also volunteered with a small fire department where I lived in Jefferson County.  I came to the school sometime near dusk with a truck that was to provide lighting for the efforts (which had essentially wound down from an emergency scene to a crime scene).  The next day I found myself volunteering to do standby while the bomb squad detonated and deactivated a truckload of explosives that had been delivered to the school by the shooters.  It’s a little bit strange that the specter of Columbine seems to have had a net desensitizing effect on our culture, these types of shootings becoming commonplace enough that the front page of the Denver Post –Columbine’s hometown paper –managed to only find space for a tiny blurb on the front page for a shooting that killed 14 people last week in Binghamton, New York.  Columbine was the first, these other shootings growing less and less meaty to a readership that has already seen the story.  Same plot, different actors, I guess.

Marxhausen told me that he participates in a weekly discussion on religion, explaining that God is in the conversation and not the result.  Ten years after the shootings, then, it seems like a good thing that people are still talking about the tragedy, the cultural fallout being less important than the simple fact that it is still relevant and in our thoughts.