By Anna Kovler

For years, Jean-François Bouchard has made work that documents people deemed to be on the “fringes” of society. In his most recent photographic series he turns the lens on gun enthusiasts in America who frequent The Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot, a three-day event in the Arizona desert, and the biggest of its kind in America. Bouchard’s haunting photographs include portraits of people with their weapons, and the punctured remains of the plethora of targets available at the event, including model airplanes, cars, shipping containers, and propane tanks, some of which explode on contact.  

For his exhibition In Guns We Trust at Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal, Bouchard traveled back to the desert to bring back actual bullet-strewn target objects including a large shipping container that is so perforated that it starts to look like lace. I spoke with Jean-François on the occasion of his exhibition to find out what it was like to be in the desert and what message he hopes to send with this work.  

AK: How did you first encounter the subculture of gun enthusiasts? And were they receptive to being documented by you? 

JFB: Well, I’m interested in subcultures in general, so I spent a bit of time exploring these cultures and the first time I was in a shooting range was almost a decade ago, so it was on my mind for along time. But 3-4 years ago I went to Arizona, and the first time I just didn’t know how to approach the subject. Then I visited a few times, and ultimately got invited to their event. It was a slow, painstaking process to get accepted. 

AK: What mood were you trying to convey in your series, In Guns We Trust? 

JFB: I was interested in depicting the destruction that follows these shooting events and I was in the desert at night and it was quite eerie. There is this mix of beauty and destruction, and of course the Arizona sky is quite spectacular, so my goal was to convey this feeling of out-of-this-world eeriness. As I was roving the desert in the middle of the night, it felt very strange.  

AK: The lighting in these photos is exceptionally beautiful, how did you light the scene?  

JFB: I actually get this question a lot! Even photographers assume it was very fancy equipment, but it wasn’t. Before I was interested in contemporary art I was more inclined towards journalistic documentary photography, therefore I went to work with very light equipment to make things very flexible. Most of these pictures have been lit with a one-dollar flashlight I bought at the dollar store, quite the opposite from fancy equipment. This makes me agile when I work. Some of the vehicles were also lit from the inside; I think it was with a camping headlight.  

AK: Since America is so divided on the issue of guns right now, was it difficult to make this work, and was there any criticism?  

JFB: I had a bit of explaining to do to some people, but to me this endeavor was interesting because I was stepping outside of my surroundings and engaging with people with a radically different point of view than my own. It didn't change my view on the topic, but it did give me a much better understanding of these people and how they came to this culture. There were a lot of kids present there, and I realized people were brought up with these beliefs. A lot of them had been in the army and had family members in the army and it helped me realize how prevalent military-inspired culture is in the U.S. It’s very easy as a liberal to discard these people as “weirdos” but when you dig deeper you realize they are victims of a culture and a belief system that exists in the U.S, and when you’re exposed to that at a young age, you see it as perfectly normal and desirable. It was worth stepping out of my point of view to learn that.  

AK: Being at the Big Sandy Shoot must have been a very loud experience. When you represent this with photographs, do you think something is lost from the experience of it?  

JFB: That's the very nature of photography, and the human experience. And I think that can be said of any war photographs. I was just looking at photos of D-Day, and of course you can guess what it felt like, but not sense it. That’s the reason I brought back a shipping container and other target objects to Montréal for this installation. One of my rationale for bringing these objects back was precisely to elevate the sensory experience from just looking at the photographs. I also wanted the show to almost have an anthropological aspect to it.  

AK: Were viewers’ reactions to the objects different than their reaction to the photographs?  

JFB: I think the physicality of it made reactions more visceral and that was really the intent. There is something about photography that is both realistic and removed, so of course a physical object plucked from the scene has a very direct impact on people.  

AK: What are you working on next? 

JFB: I’m working on a project that is currently entitled Escape From Babylon and I’m studying another subculture of people who have embraced libertarian values to the point of completely rejecting society. They live in “off the grid” societies, not for ecological reasons, but because they don't want to pay taxes, and they want as few laws as possible. One such community is based in California, and its attracting people I consider economic refugees, who can no longer afford to live in expensive cities like San Francisco. So my research now is on the conceptual tension between libertarian values and the economic meltdown of a certain class of people. I find that intersection to be extremely interesting. I’m spending even more time in the desert, only this time with completely different people.