Interview with Kyle Cassidy 
Extras:
Kyle's blog
ArmedAmerica.org
More of Kyle's work
Video: The making of Armed America
More interviews:
ESPN
Phawker.com
Gunpundit
Kyle Cassidy with F&W's president Sara Domville at the Book Expo America convention of newly-published works, in NYC, June 2007. F&W is Krause Publications' parent company. Photo © copyright Kyle Cassidy (as are ALL the photos on this page), www.kylecassidy.com.
Kyle Cassidy has been a freelance writer and photographer since 1999. His photographs have been published in the New York Times, Barron’s Financial, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He writes frequently about technology and has been an outspoken voice in the area of practical modern photographic theory. Largely known for his fashion and portrait photography, he became interested in photographing gun owners during the 2004 Presidential Election, which resulted in Armed America: Portraits Of Gun Owners In Their Homes. Currently his book is the number one selling photography book in the U.S. (2007)
Interview with Kyle Cassidy, Author of Armed America
by Holly Russo
I've been reading your book and I am already chagrined that I started out with such a single-minded view of gun ownership. Reading what people had to say opened my mind on the issue. Thank you for such a thought-provoking presentation.
That's a really interesting thing to hear. I've been surprised how many people's responses have been very similar to particular photos -- perhaps it's the emergence of a cultural conscious, and the reactions are built upon visual clues from a vocabulary I don't understand (but I'm sure someone does). Even gun owners were quick at times to stereotype other gun owners, which surprised me.
For example there was one picture where a guy had all these guns in a room full of CDs and stickers & sayings all over. I was looking at the stickers and couldn't believe that some of them denounced Bush. I don't know why I thought most gun lovers would be Bush supporters.
There were quite a few anti-Bush people. Oddly. It seems that left wing gun owners are just less likely to talk about owning guns at the dinner table -- they tend to keep it quieter it seems.
How did you find the people for your book?
I started hanging out in gun ranges in early 2005. I'd go a couple times a week, not mention photography, and just keep coming back. It was probably six months before I actually mentioned photography to people, I wanted to become familiar first, so I wasn't just some guy coming in off the street. I talked to people at every opportunity, asked them about their guns, about their shooting. I discovered that people in gun ranges are _really friendly_ -- they want to tell you about their gun, they want to show it to you. So it was a lot of that at first, just being friendly and talking to people. After I had about 12 or 13 portraits in my portfolio it got much easier to find people, because they could see what I was trying to do and that I wasn't coming out of left field trying to make a political statement, that I really _was_ just interested in people and making a book about people.
Was there anyone you photographed that you later decided not to include?
The book was put together from the very outset to be a particular size, length, and the like. I over shot the book, but not by much. I was worried that if I came in with 200 photos that it was then possible that _someone_, _somewhere_ in the food-chain up the line from me could include or discard images based on people's statements and turn the book into something partisan by either including a lot of people with super pro-gun statements, or including a lot of people who looked less-safe or whatever. So keeping the number of portraits I took close to the number of portraits in the book was one way that I felt I could keep control of the content, which I wanted very much to be neutral. As it was, my fears were unfounded. My publisher was really right behind me on that and nobody ever suggested to me that they'd like to see it a little more "pro gun" or a little more "anti gun" -- they just stood by me the whole time.
Was there anything that surprised you while you were doing this project, or did it pan out mostly as you expected?
I was surprised early on at how hard it was to find people to be in the book. Gun owners can be very suspicious of the media. I'd thought at first, very naively, that I'd just be able to walk in to a gun store, say what I was doing, and they'd give me a list of 20 people to call. I talked to a _lot_ of gun stores, only one ever helped me.
I was also surprised by how many of the people I photographed didn't fit the stereotype in my head. I realized when I started this that I had a very abstract idea of who gun owners were. And when you said the word there was sort of a vague, beat-up pickup truck with a guy in a dirty baseball hat, and a Bush/Cheney sticker on the the back and while I definitely met people like that, and they weren't rare, it by no means was the majority. I was surprised at the number of people who owned guns but hadn't fired them for years, and surprised by the number of John Kerry stickers on the cars in the driveways of people I photographed. I thought, going into this, that it was going to be something of a monoculture -- but it really wasn't
Organizationally, was it hard to keep track of who said what with which photos? I mean, you download photos that are all labeled DSC00whatever and it must be tough to organize all of this.
I organized all the photos in folders sorted by date. So the folder structure might look like:
2006-02-14 fred gun portrait
2006-02-15 jennifer gun portrait
and in each of those folders would be the 300 photos or so. Then I'd pick photos from that, two, three, four, however many were contenders, and put them in a folder with just their name "fred" or "jennifer" and then put that in a folder called "armed america - book - version X" where X was whatever version of the book I was working on. I also put a scan of their model release in that folder. So I could just go to someone's name, find the photos that we were considering using, find their model release, find the text file with their statement in it -- it all worked out very well. the first 13 versions of the book I did in alphabetical order, because it was easy for me to know that "avery" was before "joe" whenever I wanted to go through and change something. I actually sent the book to my publisher in alphabetical order with the instruction to "mix these up somehow" -- eventually two people there printed out all the portraits, arranged them into piles based very loosely on "type" and re-ordered them that way.
How many photos did you take, on average, of a subject before you felt you had enough? Or did you take as many as you needed until you saw that you had what you were looking for? I guess what I am wondering is if you had a specific vision of what you wanted to capture and worked until you accomplished that, or if you were surprised by any of your photos.
I think the smallest number of photos I took of anyone was Joseph, who's posing with a hunting rifle in front of some mounted heads. I probably took seven photos of him. Going into his house I thought "okay, I know where we're taking the photo, because that giant moose head has to be in it." It took 10 minutes to set up the light, Joe stood there with his rifle, I took six or seven photos and he didn't move or blink and I looked at the histogram saw that the exposure was right and said "okay, I guess we're done here." Some other ones took hours and involved hundreds of photographs in various rooms of the house before I got the "right" one.
The people you captured from PA - were those scattered throughout the state or mostly around Philly? PA is so huge and has such diverse land, from urban to country. I was wondering about the PA photos and if people were more likely to have guns if they were near a city because of crime-consciousness, or if they were more likely to have them in the country because of hunting/family upbringing.
I found that geography seems to have a lot to do with a) if you have guns b) the reason you have guns and c) the type of guns you have. I am of course paraphrasing this from my anecdotal experience in photographing people -- I can't speak for gun owners, but it seemed to me that In Philadelphia people were more likely to have handguns and "home defense" shotguns. In rural areas there were a lot of hunting rifles and not so many handguns. In some parts of central pennsylvania and wisconsin and places like that you can just go door to door and say "Hi, can I photograph your gun?" and everybody has one.
Was your assistant assigned to you from the publisher or did you know him beforehand?
I knew Phil beforehand. He was a combat photographer in Iraq, so he came into this with a vast vast amount of knowledge about firearms and about photography. So not only could he meticulously set the white balance and flash settings, but he'd also go into someone's house and say "Ooh, is that the Romanian AK-47 or the Egyptian one? I haven't seen a stock like that on the new AK-74, is it aftermarket?" and people would immediately, I think, feel a lot more at-ease. I really couldn't have done it without him. He also drove the whole way.
What did you eat on the road traveling? (I can't believe you were in a car without A/C!) Did you pack lunches and mostly go to supermarkets or did you eat at restaurants in between homes? Did you also sometimes eat with your subjects? I know some of them put you up overnight, that's so nice of them.
All of the above. Sometimes I'd fill up a cooler at the supermarket and make food along the way. I ate at a lot of Taco Bells. I'm a vegetarian and some places you'd just get a blank stare if you asked for something without meat in it, so I packed a lot of energy bars and the like. We ate with lots of people -- all across the country people put us up on their sofas, guest bedrooms, living room floors, and fed us like long lost children. Phil, who is not a vegetarian, got to eat Elk, and Moose, and Venison. I was happily surprised that nobody who fed us freaked out or got worried about my diet, universally they'd say "Okay, I'll whip up something with no meat!"
Are you still in touch with any of your subjects? (Did you become friends with anyone?)
I did. I became friends with quite a few people, and with quite a few people who are very different from me. It made me realize that people can get along if they meet on the right terms and if they listen to one another with open minds. I'm on a lot of people's "cc" lists for those "forward this to everybody you know!" sorts of things from _all over_ the political spectrum now.
Did anyone offer to take you shooting?
Yes, lots. In fact, in Kentucky one of the people we photographed, as we were leaving, said "Have you ever shot explosives with a machine gun?" I said that I had never shot explosives with a machine gun. He said "would you like to?" Phil said "yes" before my eyes were done blinking and upon reflection, I thought "wow, this could be one of those 'once in a lifetime' opportunities, and what am I here for if not to experience new things." So I said "Yeah, sure, how can I say 'no'?" And he took us to a famous shooting range called "Knob Creek" which is in a sort of canyon with high walls and a flat floor. He mixed up this explosive called "tannerite" which is two inert powders that become reactively explosive when mixed together -- you can't set it off with a hammer, you have to hit it with something very hard, and he set these plastic containers of tannerite thirty or fifty yards down range and I got to shoot a fully automatic machine gun. When you hit these things they'd make a very loud "KABOOM!" and a cloud of smoke about ten feet across would sort of blast out. There was something oddly satisfying about it. And now next time someone asks me if I've ever shot explosives with a machine gun, I'll be able to say "why yes, I have."
How much did it cost to fill up your tank on the huge road trip? (Did your publisher cover these costs?)
I do have all this written down, because it was on my taxes last year, but I don't recall off the top of my head. I think I spent pretty close to $8,000 on travel in the two years I was working on this.
 Kyle with a new Hasselblad, contemplating its first shoot. None of the pictures in Armed America were taken with it, but maybe the next book! |
Did you need to buy any new camera equipment for this or did you already have it?
I was shooting with a Nikon D100 when I started. When I signed the book deal and my publisher gave me a fat advance check, I bought a Nikon D200 which was a HUGE upgrade. It's an amazing, wonderful, beautiful camera. So about 1/4 of the photos were taken with the d100 and the rest with the new camera.
What kind of camera & lens(es) did you use? (or are those trade secrets?)
Nearly every photo in the book was taken with a Sigma 12-24 ultra-wide zoom. There's one taken with a 200mm f/ 2.8 and one, I think, taken with a Tameron 18mm f 2.8.
Did you have to approach a lot of publishers or did you find this one easily? Do you have an agent that helped you find the publisher or did you forego that route and find them yourself?
I found them myself. I'd gotten together a list of about fifteen publishers who I thought published things similar to what I wanted to do, and I divided them up into four groups "favorite", "second favorite", "third favorite" and "find a new job". I sent out, I think, four proposals my first week. 48 hours later Paul Kennedy from Krause was on the phone with me saying that they wanted it. A couple of days later rejections from two of the other three trickled in, but I didn't pay much attention to it.
I had a really good proposal, I think, I spent weeks working on it so that when the envelope was opened it would just pop out an every question an acquisitions editor would want to know would be there, answered, in an easy to follow way, very well researched. When you send something like this to a publisher, you're basically saying "I have this idea I want you to invest $100,000 or $200,000 in." And the first thing you need to show them is that you believe in your idea that much.
How long was the actual road trip?
There were a bunch of road trips, I didn't do it all in one vast swath. From LA to Austin to Atlanta to Fayetteville to Philadelphia was one, then there was one from the Southern tip of Florida up to Boston, and one from Green Bay straight down through Illinois, across Indiana, Ohio, etc. Others like that. Having time in between the trips gave the photos I'd taken more time to percolate to the surface and people around the country to get excited about me coming by, and that made the portrait-taking easier. There was one point in time where I realized that I'd worked 100 days straight. Every day.
Do you have any favorite photographs?
I have two hanging in my house -- the one of Donno and Judy on the cover, and the one of Bash and Cisco. I love the look of the dog's eyes in that one, and I just love everything about the photo of Donno and Judy, they're all dressed up, they look so happy, their son is so happy, waving at the camera. I wish their feet were all the way in the photo -- that's my only regret, but if that's the worst thing about it, I'm happy.
Did you get to pick the front cover photo?
I did. There were a few meetings about it, some people were worried about it having a kid on the front. They had me write out why I thought it was a good cover, my editor loved the photo, so he went to bat for it, I'd done up a few alternates that I also liked but eventually, everybody was okay to go with that one. And I'm glad, I really like it.
What's next on your horizon? (I think the military tattoos but am not sure...?)
www.kylecassidy.com/warpaint -- Tattoos of service veterans is what I'm working on now, It keeps me out there, meeting people, hearing stories -- which I love. I'm also working, sort of half-heartedly, on a book or maybe a calendar called "fat cats" which is just a collection of photos of cats that weigh more than 25 lbs. My publisher doesn't think it'll sell, but I want to prove them wrong. So if you have a 30 lb cat, call me.
How in the world did you find time to work on this?
When something is alive in your mind, whether it's this, or your kids, or golf, or your novel, when it's got a life, you make time for it. I spent so much time on this because I believed in it, and I still do. I think it's an important book, I think the photos are good, I think it's entertaining, I'm not tired of looking through it yet. When you're working on your own dreams, you have limitless energy.
Is there anything you wish you'd been able to add or do differently about the book?
You know, I'd love it to be 16x20 and 400 pages and all this, but if left to your own devices, no author or artist is ever satisfied with their work. That's why you need an editor to grab it from you and say "Okay, it's done. No more photographing gun owners, go have a party, buy yourself a hat, take up bowling, visit the zoo, this is over."
Did you make your own website (armedamerica.org)? Did you register the name when you first started or later on?
I made my own. I got the name early on and put up the website when I had six photos or so.
Where did you come up with the title?
The title just came to me pretty much at the outset. It was there from day one or two. There were a couple other books called "armed america", one was a text book about gun control that was out of print, and another that was in manuscript form but eventually sold and shows up on searches with mine, but they're so different nobody's going to confuse them.
Photos of Kyle Cassidy
All photos copyright © Kyle Cassidy unless otherwise noted.
Kyle (front) with Jeff, photographer from the Philadelphia Weekly: www.armedamerica.org
At Book Expo America, NYC, June 2007
Kyle Cassidy with author of AC/DC: Let There Be Rock, Susan Masino
at Book Expo America in NYC, June 1, 2007
Armed America was published by Krause Books.
For Kyle Cassidy's other work, please visit www.kylecassidy.com.