JENNY HYDE

All-American, digital prints 2017

This series of digital prints feature individual American-made rifles. A local gun shop gave me permission to document these guns with a photo scanner. This was done onsite in the gun shop. At first, I was only interested in the .22 caliber rifles, as a way of looking at the gun as a household tool, as it is often understood to be in most rural American homes. However, once the process started, all rifles became a point of interest - old shotguns along with newer manufactured models.

These images question the cultural identity of Americans in different ways – in particular looking at the romanticized depiction of isolation or “independence.”

The titles come from lines on profiles of dating apps like Tinder. Out of context these profile descriptions give the objects human history – and further examines the relationship between Americans and guns.