Deconstructing the Guns is a series of photos that experiment with the potential beauty that can be derived from the original objects. Each of the guns was photographed with a digital camera. The images were then placed into a computer where they were isolated from their backgrounds. Once isolated, some of the images of the guns were altered with the computer by rotating parts into abstractions of the original forms. Others were altered by slicing images of the original guns into many different pieces and moving the pieces into unexpected versions of the original object. The goal was to morph the original objects into a new version of the guns, while still maintaining enough of the original form so that the viewer can recognize where the new images came from.
I have always considered many guns to be beautiful objects. This aesthetic admiration has nothing to do with the harm they can do to humans and to animals. Because of the sensitivity that many people have today toward guns and the destruction caused by them, I have experimented with images that convert the guns into harmless non-functional objects, that have become new images of never before seen abstractions of themselves.
Michael Jantzen
Status: Built
Location: Santa Fe, NM, US
