Jennifer Ray’s ongoing project In Range documents objects–abandoned, improvised targets–found at a shooting range in Wyoming. The abandoned items, which Ray sees as traces of their original owner, are treated as sculptural material and photographed with a large format camera at night through the aid of studio lights. Ray’s arrangements draw on the real as well as the implied, connecting the present to the historical trajectory of gun violence in the United States. By not photographing the shooters themselves, Ray seeks to look for more fundamental reasons for the United States’ obsession with gun culture. Interested in how unresolved strains of fear, anger, inequality, and hatred undergird the preoccupation with guns, the artist’s photographs exude tension through the collapsing of aesthetics and implicit violence.
Read the full interview with the artist here.
Jennifer Ray is a Wichita, Kansas based artist and educator. She received her MFA in Photography from Columbia College and BA in Studio Art from Oberlin College.
