I’m heading to Wyoming in a few minutes to continue with some work that I started last month. Looking forward to being able to share a finished product, but the mighty god of publication embargos will prevent that until the project runs.
Went to my third machine gun shoot last weekend, adding chapters to an ongoing look at the role of the gun as part of the bigger American archetype. Kinda’ fun to go to these things now after becoming more familiar with the people, the guns, the sound, and the concussion that goes along with them. Every time I sit down to write one of these gun posts, I find myself wanting to point backwards to my initial sentiments that I shared after attending my first shoot. The write-up is available here. The only pieces of that story to have changed are that my friend, mentioned in the beginning of the text, who struck an IED in Afghanistan, has since been awarded a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star; Lester, the happy farmer with the bowling ball cannon, finally made the photo edit and is pictured below with his son, Daniel; And the event’s organizer, Bob McBride, was kind enough to loan me a pair of gloves for the latest shoot. The hole in the index finger was, according to McBride, for boogers. Turns out it worked just as well to adjust camera controls.
These are a few of the Polaroids I took away from the last shoot. Only had a few hours on account of some other work I had to return to Denver for. Color photos to follow sometime in the next week.
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Found this family while working on another project, photographing an immigration policy reform rally in Greeley, Colo., last weekend. Pictured here is Nicole Harrison, her niece Cadence Jurgens, and her two sons, Logan and Lain. The family had come out of the house that they are remodeling to watch the march pass.
Tumbleweeds collect in the corner of an empty Motel on the edge of Kit Carson, Colorado.
I’ve had a lot of work that has taken me to the rural plains of Colorado lately. Always enjoy the drive and the quiet that comes with the sweeping flat of the landscape as the Rocky Mountains settle into the farmlands of the midwest. I’ve never really done a comprehensive edit of all the photographs I snag as little souvenirs of my passage, though I probably should. On these drives I stop every few miles to grab a couple of frames in the nooks and crannies of the towns I pass through, mementos of places which are experiencing a certain kind of transition as our economy continues to become more specialized and scaled.
The thing about photographing in these towns is that it’s pretty easy to make the visual case that something horrible is happening, that the Second Coming has settled in as younger generations flee to the cities. To me, that argument has always come off as centric, a bit exploitative, and cynical. I feel that there is a tendency for photographers to take advantage of these images to illustrate a story that is not exactly true to the everyday experience of ordinary people; life comes complete with certain common struggles that are true no matter where you live.
The piece of the story that I think has more basis in reality is that as you move through rural America there is a tendency to find things that are not quickly erased. There is a certain immunity to the transient nature of pop culture that our more urban centers thrive on: the turn over of fashion, the 24 hour news cycle, Twitter, constant updates and overwrites of what is cool. In short, things are not meant to last.
But in these towns there is no subway, no cultural gatekeepers, no hand that pastes over last week’s placards with new signs, new merchandise, new art. What is created tends to stay that way until it is reclaimed by nature’s softer reckoning.
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