Sometimes, when you get an idea about a project you want to start, a specific subject matter you want to pursue, the path to get there takes you to unexpected places.

A guy I used to occasionally work with, I’m going to call him “Army Dave” because that’s what a lot of people called him in the past, ran into me at my local coffee place about four weeks ago. The encounter ended up being serendipitous, as I had been experimenting with some visuals that featured photographs of floral arrangements I had taken the previous year and the year before. I was trying to come up with ways of combining those images with images of explosive devices and firearms.

My mind had been pretty focused on the latest war the United States has decided to engage in, and since we have been pretty much in a state of some form of armed aggression since I was born, I was looking for an outlet. A way to juxtapose the natural beauty of arranged flowers with something whose only purpose is to kill and maim human beings.

Army Dave provided the first step in bringing things together. You see, Army Dave collects things. Army things, and it turned out that he has a collection of disarmed hand grenades. Ten of them from the Second World War through today. Both American and European.

The two of us had been talking, briefly catching up with lots of “what have you been up to?” And “What are you working on these days?”. It turned out that Army Dave, who is a gifted illustrator was doing freelance work illustrating books on military weapons of the 20th century. So I asked him if he had any explosive devices in his collection or that he was using for visual reference and that’s when he told me about his grenade collection. And this is where I went down the rabbit hole of visual acquisition.

I could have used any number of stock images for my project. A quick search online would have presented me with any number of options, but I want to use photographs that I have taken for my composites, and Army Dave was polite enough to say yes when I asked him if I could take photos of his grenades.

I set a date to meet him at his house, brought me camera gear and a roll of white paper so I can photograph them isolated against the white and easily COB them at a later date. Over the course of a couple of hours I took around ten photos of each grenade and the two of us talked about who I might talk to about getting photos of other weapons to use. Specifically, landmines, artillery shells, and other explosive ordinances that are often lost on the battlefield and discovered decades later as a live round that needs to be disposed of.

His suggestion was to contact all of the three military museums in the area and ask if they had any of these in their collection and could I come take photos of them. With that one suggestion, I was off to the races and looking to expand what I had in mind by also including handguns and assault rifles.

Adding guns lead me to reaching out to gun store owners, which became the second leg of what was rapidly becoming a series of encounters I never imagined having in the last 20 years. So I started dropping in at local gun stores to ask if I could take photos of some of the guns they had in stock. I visited six before I finally got a skeptical yes from one owner and only after showing him an example of what I want to do, as well as a promise that I wouldn’t do anything that would incriminate his store or make him liable in any way.

It was a reluctant yes, and he wanted to supervise handling the firearms, so it was an after-hours arrangement where the hand guns were photographed the same way the grenades were. Against a white background, evenly lit so I could cut out the background later.

Here’s the twist: the owner was so impressed with what he considered “Product Shots,” he actually offered to hire me to photograph a bunch of guns for his marketing materials. I told him I’d think about it. I’m not a gun owner and don’t really want to help promote the sale of more firearms in the United States. We have enough already.

Next up was reaching out to the directors of two local military museums. The WWI Museum and the Frontier Army Museum with emails detailing my project, examples of what I am trying to make, a brief artist statement about the work, and an offer to call them to discuss in greater detail the bigger picture I had in mind.

The request to both was pretty straightforward. Do you happen to have in your collection either on display or in your archive and inert landmines, artillery shells, or other explosive ordinance that I could photograph for a series of artworks I am developing? I really didn’t expect to hear back from anyone, especially within twenty-four hours, but this morning I got a reply from one of them that is somewhat optimistic.

They said tentatively yes to taking photos and provided a small list of what they had available. The best part being that they seemed keenly interested in the overall nature of the project and the subject matter base on the brief statement I included in my emailI think I’ll be able to get images of 3 various-sized artillery shells, maybe a couple more grenades, and some random explosive charges.

I have no idea if any of these are going to work, but I love the idea of tracking this stuff down, checking it out, and seeing where things go. It all comes down to size, shape, and how they read visually when they are reworked, distressed, distorted, and composited into the final piece.

So, we’ll see where this goes. I’m hoping they can connect me with others who might have some of the artifacts I’m looking for that are close by. I’m going to the museum today since they are closed to see what they have and talk to the director about the project. I have the first set of grenade images worked through. Handguns are underway. Hopefully, this morning I’ll come away with more material to build from in the near future.