Famed photographer turns camera lens to school shootings

WILSON, N.C. (AP) - Burk Uzzle turned his attention and the lens of his camera toward gun violence and deadly school shootings this past week.

“What can I do?” the renowned photographer asked himself last month when he learned of yet another school shooting and more murdered children.

For more than 50 years now, Uzzle, who makes his home in Wilson, has used his camera as his voice, whether it was to draw attention to the civil rights movement, the atrocities of Cambodia or to offer a look inside a torture prison in Haiti under the “Papa Doc” regime.

Last Monday, Uzzle invited students from Sallie B. Howard School for the Arts and Education to his studio, where he took a well-orchestrated portrait of seven students dressed in black, standing hand-in-hand behind a hollowed-out AR-15 platform rifle that Uzzle says is similar in style to the one used in the mass school shooting in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

He named the photo “Targets.”

“It’s up to the artists to make this world a better place,” Uzzle said. “If we can raise a voice and we can point out through art, we can create works that show people or remind them that these are innocent little kids who are getting shot.

“What kind of world have we created? Why are we living like this? Why can’t we make it better?”

Uzzle contacted Joann Woodard, administrator at Howard School, and asked her if she would be willing to bring some of her students to the studio to be photographed. He requested children who would represent a range of age, gender and ethnicity. He wanted a mix to make a point: “Everybody is getting killed,” he said.

Woodard visited Uzzle in his studio and saw the set he had built with a metal backdrop and the weapon, spent rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines. She was assured the studio would be safe and that the borrowed weapon had been rendered harmless.

She went back to school and contacted parents and asked if they wanted their children to participate. She had no problem getting participants. Woodard liked the idea of the school contributing - of taking baby steps to mobilize to protect children.

She said she was proud and moved that Uzzle had the social consciousness and concern as a citizen about the lack of protection we as a nation are providing children.

“Artists sometimes can have a big impact to get people to take action,” she said. “A powerful image can move folks to action, to get them involved.”

Uzzle took great pains to prepare the set for the photo. He had to hang the backdrop and set the lights exactly as he wanted them. It took a day and a half just to arrange the weapon on a reflective poncho that he usually keeps in his truck and to get the lighting just right.

Once the children were in the studio, he selected seven students of various heights to be in the photo. They were instructed to hold hands, close their eyes and keep a soft face. He and Woodard worked to coordinate seven sets of eyes of feet and keep them still and focused.

“Freeze. Don’t move,” Woodard told them. “Freeze right there.”

Woodard huddled with Uzzle by a laptop and reviewed each image.

“You had your eyes open!” Uzzle called out a few times.

Woodard worked with Uzzle to make subtle changes, moving a child up a step or back a step, arranging hair and moving braids, until they had it just right.

Behind the camera were photography students from the school who went to watch and learn. Parents of the young models were there as well.

Libby Hockaday said she had no hesitation allowing her children Sophia and Liam to take part in the photo shoot.

“It’s important to start conversations,” she said. “Anything that gets people talking and sends a message of unity, I think, is an important step.”

Uzzle would love for this very image to start those conversations and inspire people to take action.

“I hope it’s seen by a lot of people,” he said. “It needs to be seen near and wide.”

Odds are good it will be. Uzzle’s work has been widely exhibited and is part of collections in major museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, N.C. Museum of Art, Bibliotheque Nationale de France and National Museum of Modern Art in Japan.

Uzzle wants people to look at the beauty and innocence of the students’ faces pictured and to realize they could one day be victims of gun violence.

He hopes the image will first fascinate people with its composition and graphic elements. The object is to make it so compelling you can’t just walk by it, he said. You have to stop and look and study it. Once he has his audience’s attention, he hopes viewers will contemplate the meaning.

“It’s up to people like me to take the gloves off, be blunt, be strong, and try to get important stuff said.”

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Information from: The Wilson Daily Times, http://www.wilsondaily.com