Dawn Whitmore : Guns of Desire
By Grace Aneiza Ali
“
I ’ m fascinated with how things are marketed toward women to have this feminine shtick . . . They ’ re always talking about the gun ’ s sexy lines , the pink color , the slim fit that would fit in your tight jeans . — Dawn Whitmore
In her provocative photography project
Gun Love , Washington , D . C . -based photographer and visual artist
Dawn Whitmore transforms weapons of destruction into objects of desire . This collection of gun portraits is unapologetically about glamour and bling . What it ’ s not is a celebration or glorification of gun culture despite how it may appear at first glance .
Encased in gold , bejeweled , bedazzled , imprinted with Hello Kitty stickers , adorned with a
breast cancer ribbon , designed with floral prints , embossed with the
Louis Vuitton logo , or simply bathed in bright pink , these decorated firearms , intentionally manufactured and marketed for their “ feminine mystique ” are a striking commentary on a troubling American gun culture and the modern woman .
In what is a layered artistic process , Whitmore sources and prints the images of these ( real ) guns found online , sets them against elaborate print designs , and re-photographs the combination of gun and background . The result is a disturbing yet compelling beautification of the gun , leaving the viewer entranced by the shiny , glitzy , deadly object .
Gun Love also features
staged portraits of women modeling as various characters and holding replicas of the real decorated guns Whitmore found online . Many of the models had never held a gun before . Whitmore gave no directions on how they should pose , only asking the women to portray the stance they felt a woman with a gun should embody . The portraits reveal , according to
Whitmore , how a gun can immediately transform one ’ s sense of power .
Whitmore , who has a background in environmental conservation , was no stranger to gun culture and grew up around a hunting community in rural Maryland . It was a particular kind of hunting of animals that ignited Gun Love . In a controversial strategy that made
headlines in 2013 , the National Park Service responded to a problem of too many deer in
D . C .’ s Rock Creek Park that were threatening the park ’ s ecosystem , by hiring sharpshooters to kill them . Whitmore began making work in response to these “ managed hunts ” and in doing so encountered images of women hunters , decked out in camouflage outfits or pink gear , full make-up , and posing with pink rifles , or at times , their bloody kill .
Whitmore questioned this growing visual imagery — women with guns dressing provocatively in hunting scenarios . Wondering whether this portrayal of women with decorated guns was coming from a male or female gaze , Whtimore began to formulate Gun Love . She exhibited the project in 2015 as an artist-in-residence at the Arlington Arts Center in Virginia .
We first encountered Whitmore ’ s work on the cover of
Montana Ray ’ s collection of poems , ( guns & butter ), which is also featured in The Gun Issue . This Spring , in an interview with Whitmore over Skype , we talked about our culture ’ s use of women with guns as a marketing tool to sell sex and power .
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