Sept/Oct. 98

Picturing Women Gunowners
by Peggy Tartaro, Editor

From The Editor:

On my windowsill at work is a 5x7 blow-up of a photograph of five girls and two boys, with the obscured head of a man in the background.

A casual glance will tell you that a child’s birthday party is in progress and not much else. The kids’ hair and dress could be contemporary, or it could be 30 years ago. There isn’t much visible of the room itself, but the butterfly chair peeking out from behind the chimney of the wood stove doesn’t help. Both wood stoves and butterfly chairs are in vogue these days. You can make a guess that the girl in the center of the picture—the one in front of the birthday cake—is either seven or eight years old, depending on whether this particular family adds a candle "to grow on" or not. The photo is in black and white, which may or may not be a clue. Black & white makes a periodic comeback in photographic circles, so it really isn’t a big help.

The picture on my windowsill is as you have probably guessed, a family photo. (Again, though, don’t be too sure of even that—I also have an 8x10 glossy of the great English character actor Eric Blore in my office for reasons much too complicated to divulge.)

What the casual observer can discern with certainty from this picture, what she might even be able to infer from it, and what emotional response it might evoke in her is a lot different than what I know to be true of it, what I am able to infer, and what emotions it summons in me.

I mention all this because of late I have been dealing with, and thinking about pictures of people, specifically pictures of gunowning people, and, most specifically, women gunowners.

Every month when I set out to put an issue together, the first thing I look at are the pictures. While we run a fair amount of what can be described as "product shots," or "technical photos;" that is, photographs of guns, and fanny packs and books and the other what-nots, the majority of the photographs show "who" not "what."

It is a conscious decision to include as many different images of as many different women—gunowning women—as possible.

In this issue, focused on competition, there are more than the usual number of different women, with different guns. That some of the women may look like you in details like hair or dress is not as much the point as the fact that they are recognizable as women who look familiar. Perhaps some of these women look like you, your sister, your co-workers, the woman you see deciding whether to dump the eighth item to make the "express checkout" at the supermarket, the mother of the pig-tailed girl your daughter plays with, your accountant, the woman down the street with the spectacular rose garden, and so on.

That most of these women have guns in their hands is rather more the point of this magazine than most other pictures you might see of women with guns. Perhaps, instead of her resemblance to your accountant, what you notice most about a woman in this magazine is that she has the exact same gun as you. Or maybe, the same make and model, but with after-market grips you don’t have, or employing a method of carry you hadn’t considered. Maybe the picture shows a woman who looks nothing like you, except for her size, and she doesn’t seem to be having much trouble with a large caliber handgun you thought was "too big" for you.

And what about facial expression? Some time back, a reader wrote to complain about the "game faces" shown in this magazine, complaining that she loved shooting, but the pictures showed too many dour and serious countenances for her taste. Well, I am pleased this issue reveals some happy faces, but most of them are the satisfied looks of accomplishment. It’s a fact of nature that most people look serious when engaged in something that requires concentration—have someone snap your picture as you fit those teeny white pumps to your daughter’s Barbie, or paint the juncture of the ceiling and the wall—and you’ll see what I mean. Some people write with their tongue between their teeth (when it isn’t in their cheek), or scrunch up their eyes when threading a needle; neither particularly a necessity to accomplishing the task at hand, but a sort of reflexive concentration of the being.

On the other hand, a year or two ago, an elderly gentleman came up to me at a trade show and told me how "tickled" he was to see Gila Hayes "throwing herself around" in pictures—stationed behind cover, prone on the ground, etc. What he saw in the pictures was the commitment to telling and showing the whole story.

This issue has more pictures of young people than usual, mainly in 13-year-old Justine Ayoob’s Second Chance feature, but elsewhere as well. I was happy to see them, because they reflect well on the parents who raise them, the future of gunowners, as well as providing, like the birthday photo in my office, a taking off point for such musings.

I was thinking about pictures recently not just because it’s part of my job to do so, but because I allowed myself to be photographed for a project involving women and guns.

Nancy Floyd teaches photography at Georgia State University and this summer was part of the artist in residence program at Syracuse University, about 140 miles east of Buffalo. She called me one afternoon and identified herself as a subscriber and explained a bit about her project, in which she takes pictures of women gunowners. I was relieved to hear that she also did some interviewing so that the "image" was not stand-alone, but instead, accompanied by some text, since, while I deal with photographs, I am more comfortable with words. Could she come and talk to me, and take my picture, Nancy asked?

"Sure," I said.

Actually, I am not usually so blithe in granting such requests. It’s not that I think pictures steal your soul, but I do believe they have the uncanny ability to make your hair look goofy.

When Nancy called, I had already had an email from Lyn Bates, another subject-to-be, recognized Nancy name, looked it up on a subscriber list and had Diane run through our W&G index, where we found, as I vaguely remembered, a letter from Nancy.

So, I brought a few preconceptions to the process. For better or worse, I also forgot our appointment until the day before, enmeshed in one thing or another at work, and neglecting to look at the calendar.

When Nancy did appear, I sat down with her and her tape recorder and talked. Then I talked some more. Then I took Nancy to lunch, where, as you might imagine, we talked. On the way to and from lunch I pointed out a few sights, which required me to talk. Okay, I do like to talk, but Nancy was easy to talk to, and with common ground, it’s even easier.

One of the things we talked about was images of women gunowners, and how those images strike cords in the readership. But what interests me, I told Nancy, was that the pictures that push buttons, seem almost beside the point. What they do is get people thinking about the way they themselves are seen by other—for example, seldom in a short, slinky cocktail dress accessorized with a custom Desert Eagle. That particular photo (of actress Anne Palliard in the original La Femme Nikita film), didn’t raise nearly as many subscribers’ eyebrows as have other, seemingly more innocuous pictures.

Part of that is our ability to tell fiction from fact, and even to appreciate a little hyperbole on our behalf. (Gunowners—at least publicly—are notorious sobersides, never cracking a smile, let alone a joke; "game faces" always in place.) So, when an image, clearly labeled "fiction" comes along, we feel a little thrill of, not quite recognition, but self-knowledge.

Negative reader reaction to photos almost always has to do, conversely, with failure to maintain "reality" in what are clearly non-fiction images. Long fingernails, for example, bother some people, even though it’s perfectly possible to operate a firearm with them. Maybe not recommended, but within the realm of reality.

But, if your own reality doesn’t include long fingernails, or hunting (another negative button for many), it’s harder to accept in others than that slinky cocktail dress.

It was hot and humid all day and when we got back to the office it was storming in earnest. While Nancy set up her equipment, she let me look through an album of pictures she had already taken for the project. I flipped through page after page of women, who, while not known to me, looked familiar. Some may be subscribers, probably most are not. I asked a few questions here and there, particularly interested in the details of the portraits. Did the women choose which room the picture was taken in? The surroundings? The props? Even in your own home, I reasoned, if you knew your photograph was going to be taken, most subjects would spend a little time in set decorating. I had—hastily hiding piles of paper and revealing my office’s long lost couch, which I thought might have taken a trip up the Amazon.

Nancy explained that, to a large extent, the "set decorating" was up to the subject who allowed Nancy into her home or office. Nancy might request a particular room for the photo, but only if it had already been offered as a "view" into the subject’s life.

It wasn’t until after Nancy left—eastward into the thunder—that it occurred to me I hadn’t gone off to primp between our return to the office and the "shoot" itself. Was that the photographer’s trick—offering me the book of images to distract me, or was it my own comfort level, and subsequent involvement with the photos?

When it was time to click, I did think about my hair, and whether I was as disheveled-looking from the heat as I felt. I allowed as how I was not a good "on demand" smiler, and perhaps the best representation of me would be with my mouth open. Nancy was noncommittal, shutter opening and closing, suggesting only a swivel of the chair to a different angle.

When I talked to her later, she assured me my smile was not "fake," that it was in fact "friendly," and that there wasn’t sweat dripping down into my face. Nancy was off to the AWARE Invitational to take more pictures, and then she and her husband were driving nearly cross country, a combination photographic safari and vacation.

Right before I finished this, Nancy sent me some of the photos she took. The one she said in her note she was going to use showed heaps of papers, folders, notebooks, videos and other sundries on my desk. I could have sworn I had done a better job of neatening up—but the evidence suggests otherwise. The reality is that my desk is always messy, and my hair a little goofy, just the way it is in the birthday picture.

Her photos will be on view from October 20-November 13 at the Natalie and James Thompson Gallery in San Jose, CA. I’ve hung around a few galleries, but never hung in one. I am grateful that I have the luxury and privilege of hanging with other women gunowners, even if this is not a particularly revolutionary endeavor. But maybe it is—what we see of ourselves and others matters a great deal.