Shouting Fire

In "Shouting Fire" I tackle the United States' violent past and present. Working with objects that have been used as shooting targets, I assert connections with contemporary gun culture and colonialism, chivalry and patriarchy, and fear and hatred.

Few nations exist without violent pasts; however, the violence – physical, cultural, and psychological – that undergirds the creation of the United States feels fresher than most. Currently, the threat of violence is ever-present, fueled by vicious political rhetoric, 15 years of ballooning gun sales, the rise of extremist organizations, and a breakdown of social trust.

In my project Shouting Fire, I tackle our violent past and present. Working with objects that have been used as shooting targets and left behind, I photograph on Wyoming state land used as a 10-mile unregulated gun range. Though this body of work bears a relationship to traditional documentary, I use lighting and my arrangements to assert particular narratives. I reference memento mori still lifes, episodes in 20th century pop culture, gendered advertising, Manifest Destiny, racialized violence, tropes of masculinity, and alt-right symbolism.

I avoid photographing the shooters themselves, though at times I offer clues to their identities. I want to look beyond simple matters of demographics toward the roots of our nation’s obsession. The title of the project, Shouting Fire, can be read in several ways – as an order to shoot, a description of vehement argument, or, as a reference to what US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said you can’t do in a crowded theater. (You can't falsely shout fire in a crowded theater.) It references the conflict over where the rights of the individual end and the rights of the society begin.

As a nation, we are currently angry, fearful, and dangerous. Or at least the loudest voices are. Somehow, it seems the rights of the bully have come to outweigh those of the bullied. The problems embedded in this work are not about individuals; they are about the political, cultural, and economic systems in which we are all implicated, and which we all have the capacity to influence for the better.