Blood and Honey Gun Nation @ The Half King

For more than three years, award-winning British photographer Zed Nelson documented America's gun culture. In GUN NATION, he avoids the stereotypical groups that are often conveniently portrayed as the reason behind the "problem." There are, significantly, no images of gang-members posturing with their weapons, and no fringe-element extremists in camouflage fatigues. Instead, Nelson focused his lens on so-called "ordinary" law-abiding citizens, at gun stores and NRA conventions, in living rooms, emergency rooms and schoolyards. "I wanted to show how guns pervade all areas of society," says Nelson. These compelling pictures explore the paradox of why America's most potent symbol of freedom is also one of its greatest killers, resulting in an annual death toll of over 30,000 American citizens. London-based photographer Zed Nelson does not shy away from conflict, controversy or crisis. GUN NATION is one of his most important projects to date, and has been published in major magazines the world over, was screened on British television, and has won four prestigious photojournalism awards: the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award (USA); First Prize, World Press Photo; Visa d'Or for best magazine story of the year (France); and First Prize in the Nikon Press Awards. It is regarded by many as the definitive body of work on the subject, and has recently been published as a book by Westzone Publishing (UK). After a decade working as a photojournalist in some of the harshest and most lawless areas of the world, Zed Nelson has had more than the occasional opportunity to witness the devastating effectiveness of man's favorite deadly weapon of choice – the gun. An abstraction to most, the terrifying reality of what guns can do became all too real for Nelson when, whilst documenting the war in Afghanistan in 1994, the car he was travelling in came under heavy machine-gun fire. Nelson's colleague and interpreter were both shot, and suffered horrendous injuries. This brutal reality check brought home the unglamorous reality of firearms, and planted the seeds of the idea that was later to become GUN NATION. "That incident ended my boyhood Hollywood-inspired love affair with weapons," says Nelson. "I wanted to work on a story that stripped guns of their glamour, to show what they can do to the human body, and to reveal their real impact on society." He began his study of American gun culture in the wake of a shocking and unusual British gun massacre in Dunblane, Scotland, where 16 children and their teacher were shot to death. The incident prompted a fierce backlash against guns in the UK, and calls for a ban on privately owned firearms. While gun-control measures were being debated in Britain, Nelson turned his focus on the United States, a nation where a centuries-old gun culture was clashing with the realities of modern life. Other stories covered by Nelson include: War in Angola, Afghanistan, and El Salvador; famine in Somalia; Cambodian elections; modern-day Cuba; the French Foreign Legion; and the Ku Klux Klan. His portraiture includes Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher and Mick Jagger. Nelson's work regularly appears in TIME Magazine, The [London] Observer Magazine, The [London] Sunday Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, and many others. Four years ago a man entered a British primary school and shot 16 children and their teacher to death. The event triggered a fierce backlash against guns, and calls for all privately owned firearms to be banned outright in the UK. While arguments for and against guns raged in Britain, I decided to focus on America – a country that has historically embraced and celebrated gun ownership, a nation where 40 percent of all households reportedly keep at least one gun. In the first year of this project, over 34,000 people were shot to death in streets and homes of the United States. A sizeable proportion of vocal Americans are so passionate about gun ownership that they admit no link between the proliferation and availability of firearms and the huge annual death toll. Since 1960, over half a million citizens have died by gunfire. There are an estimated 235 million guns in circulation nationwide. In the last two years of this project, a series of fatal school shootings, committed by students with a variety of firearms, shook the nation. In the wake of the worst horror, the Columbine High School massacre, the need for gun control seemed clear. Yet a local Colorado Congressman bizarrely announced: "Now is not the time to debate gun control," and a Denver newspaper columnist said, "There is something profoundly distasteful about debating gun policy in the context of the shock and mourning following such a tragedy." Rev. Lucia Guzman, director of the Colorado Council of Churches, was a rare voice of reason when she spoke out: "If not here, where? And if not now, when?" – Zed Nelson