In Chicks with Guns, Lindsay McCrum has created a cultural portrait of women gun owners in America through photographs that are both beautiful and in a sense unexpected. The book examines issues of self-image and gender through the visual conventions of portraiture and fashion, but the guns are presented here not as superimposed props but as the very personal lifestyle accessories of the subjects portrayed. And it defies stereotypes often associated with aspects of the popular culture of both guns and women. Like the 15-20 million women gun owners in this country, the women we meet in Chicks with Guns ( their portraits are accompanied by their own words), reside in all regions of the country, come from all levels of society, and participate seriously in diverse shooting activities. The women here are sportswomen, hunters, and competition shooters. Some use guns on their jobs and some for self-defense. They may not all be classically beautiful, but in these photographs they all look beautiful, exuding honesty, confidence, poise, power and pride. They are real women with real guns that play a part in their lives. By focusing her camera respectfully on this particular aspect of the American scene, gun-wielding women and girls, Lindsay McCrum sheds new light on who we are in America today.
Praise for Chicks with Guns:
“Don’t be deceived by the frisky title: Lindsay McCrum’s Chicks with Guns is a deadly (sorry) serious work of cultural iconography. It’s also visually stunning, alternately sexy, arresting, haunting and mesmerizing. In so many words, this book hits every bull’s-eye—a real stunner.” — Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You for Smoking and Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir
“A work of art in photography, Chicks with Guns is an instant classic. Any who read the text and reflect on the stunning portraits will come away with a new appreciation of the not unusual or surprising love affair between women and their firearms.” —R. L. Wilson, firearms expert, author of Silk and Steel: Women at Arms
"Photographer Lindsay McCrum has turned her lens on women who pack heat--and her pictures make for a fascinating book. In Chicks with Guns McCrum's subjects express their passion for firearms in their own words, but it's the photographs, which lend a hint of Gainsborough to heiresses and ranch girls alike, that convey how stylish, seductive, and fun the shooting life can be." - W Magazine
"McCrum's portrait project is full of contradictions and complexity, of ironies and sublime beauty. . . .The pairing of these stories with McCrum's photography makes this book absolutely seductive."--Publishers Weekly
"I opened this sizeable hardcover to one of the 80 photographic plates, and started going through the glossy pages, at first only noticing the striking beauty of the full-page photographs and the women who were the subjects. I found myself wondering if they were just models holding guns as props, until I began to read the personal statements on each adjacent page. Written in the women’s own words, it seemed to me that their stories read like something from the pages of Field & Stream, and I wanted to know more."--Field & Stream"Chicks with Guns, a gorgeous new book by Lindsay McCrum, is a lot more cerebral than it sounds. Fine art photographer McCrum shot dozens of portraits of women with their firearms, accompanied by personal statements from each woman." —Houston Chronicle
"Lindsay McCrum's handsome new book of photographs, Chicks with Guns, [offers] painterly images that neither glorify nor vilify their subjects." --The New York Times
"McCrum's portraits of female hunters, cops, Olympic biathletes and collectors are unsettling, entertaining and strangely elegant. Perusing the images without reading the personal essays is akin to watching a Merchant Ivory film without the sound." -Los Angeles Times
