Jeff Corwin
Guns in America
A clinical look at what we expect from our government.
Bozeman, 2022
Jeff Corwin's autopsy of gun culture is a clinical presentation of dark, theatrical still-life photography. This is a series that leaves no ambiguity of the violent attributes surrounding America's obsession with the Second Amendment. Film noir-esque in its dark content and staged props that so obviously represent society's evils… Corwin says, “The images are not subtle. Nor is the subject matter and the violence that we face every day.”
Twenty-plus years ago, when the first school kids jumped out windows to escape a mass-shooting event, guns played a side-lined role to the attention and blame laid upon unsuspecting, absentee parents, peer bullying and mental health. Now, there is no mistaking the outsized role guns, particularly high-magazine semi-automatic rifles, play in the amount of tragic death we experience in our America, today.
The most powerful act of citizenship is your right to critique our democracy.“…I laid the gun on top and took a test shot in color. It was then that something snapped. I would go on to use the guns illustrating my thoughts on the absence of sane policy in the United States. For the rest of that year, I spent hours upon hours wandering antique stores and junkyards looking for props to build the sets. The lighting became a paramount component of the 18 images that followed; harsh light, both frontal and from the side, with loud, tweaked and saturated colors.” — Jeff Corwin
Still-life photographer, unsubtle by design.
Jeff Corwin is a photographer whose decades of commercial and fine-art practice converge in Guns in America — a series of dark, theatrical still lifes built from props gathered over a year of wandering antique stores and junkyards. Harsh light, frontal and from the side, with loud, tweaked and saturated colors, stages America's obsession with the gun against the everyday objects of its culture.
The exhibition opened with a Fourth-of-July-week reception — hot dogs, cold beer, and fundraising for an organization supporting reasonable gun legislation.