Photographer Kyle Cassidy, author of Armed America (2007) and War Paint (2012), joins The Virtual Memories Show to talk about the myths of gun culture, discovering America(s), chronicling subcultures from roller-derby to soldiers with tattoos, the oddest thing he's seen on a science-fiction writer's desk, his most hated digital photo tricks, and more!
The Virtual Memories Show
Season 2, Episode 16 - Not the camera but the eye
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show, a podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and I put together this episode with a heavy heart. I'm posting this on December 17th, 2012, three days after the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. I don't normally talk about contemporary events in the intro, but I think this is the first one since 9/11 that left me crying like a baby in my car. It happened during my commute home that Friday evening. I was listening to the news on the radio and the reporter mentioned all the parents of the kids and they were waiting in the firehouse adjacent to the elementary school. At that point, everyone whose kids had survived had already left. I just left a room full of parents who were waiting to be told their children were dead. I imagine the screaming fits of a mother brought in to identify a five-year-old murder victim. And I just started bawling at 70 miles an hour. Luckily, this is New Jersey, so I was able to snap out of it by cursing out a driver who was trying to merge too quick from 208 to 287. That was Friday. On Saturday, I drove down to Philadelphia to interview the photographer, Kyle Cassidy, our guest on this week's show. A mutual acquaintance had connected us and we made this date a few weeks ago. I was ready to interview him about his recent book, "War Paint," as well as his new project where he photographed science fiction authors writing desks. And on Friday night, while I was checking out his previous work, I learned that he'd published a book in 2007 called Armed America, "Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes." Well, I thought that certainly gives us something else to talk about. I checked with Kyle to make sure he was okay with talking about guns and gun culture one day after the Newtown shootings, and he was. Thankfully, the conversation covered his other work too. I don't think I could have done an entire half hour or 40 minutes just immersed in that story. But speaking of his other work, you can find out more about my guest, his photography and his books, both Armed America and War Paint, at kylecacity.com, K-Y-L-E-C-A-S-S-I-D-Y. My guest on the virtual memory show was Kyle Cassidy, a photographer and author. We're going to start by talking about a book of Kyle's from 2007 called "Armed America" about gun culture in the US. Kyle, can you tell us about the origins of that book? Sure, I was at a dinner party in 2004, and it was right after the election, for the month after the election, John Kerry had just lost. And I was sitting next to a man who worked for one of the presidential campaigns, and while we were talking at dinner, he told me that his job, part of his job, was to help wrangle the gun vote. And it hadn't occurred to me that the gun vote was something that was cohesive and something that could be wrangled or needed to be wrangled. And during the course of this conversation, I realized that I didn't really know the reasons that people owned guns. And I thought it would be really interesting to get in a car and drive across the country and talk to gun owners about this. And I asked people one question, which is, why do you own a gun? And listened to their answers. And I photographed all of these gun owners in their house because I'm a very visual person. And I think that, for me, a very easy way to sort of understand somebody, I understand who somebody is, is to see them in the surroundings that they've created for themselves. So if you come into my house, you kind of see the kind of person who I am and without even talking to me. You look at the books on my shelves and the art on my walls and then the type of furniture that I have. And I think that this is true for almost anybody. And so what I wanted to do was to give people kind of an idea of who gun owners in America were by sort of showing them in their surroundings and letting them talk about their gun ownership. And what did you learn? I learned that we all have biases and prejudices and that acknowledging that you have a bias, that you're standing and looking at the world in a particular spot, is the first place that you need to go in order to have a rational conversation with somebody. And I learned more about myself, I think, than I learned about anything else. It was certainly a journey of discovery. And I think this is true for many journalists and for any journalist who spends a long time working on a particular project that you end up coming out of it a different person than you went in. How did you change? Well, I realized that I stereotype people. I judge people by their appearances. And we all do. It became much more apparent to me. And knowing that, I think, has really helped me when I am about to make a judgment about somebody realizing that it's something that I do. And that experience with gun culture affected how we're recording one day after the New Town grade school shooting, how do you process that experience in light of all the people you met and the whole sort of culture of gun ownership in America? Obviously, there's going to be a lot of heated debate and angry comments from a lot of sides after this. But in particular, how do you see it evolving from your perspective? One thing that I learned is that you will never win an argument in which you use the phrase, you must be an idiot. And that in creating this book and the series of images, that what happened then was that people were able to have this conversation in an art gallery or in a library or something like that, rather than in the comments section of a newspaper. And we've all seen what a complete fiasco that is for interaction. And that having a more neutral basis is a neutral place of going into it is a much better way of actually having a discussion. We're never going to have a dialogue in this country as long as it's just people shouting at each other, which is all that-- That's largely what the quote unquote, "discoracy" is. Yes, that's all that it is. And people are entrenched in talking to themselves, which I don't think is helping anything, which is a difficult thing to watch, just people shouting at each other. Again, as we talked about before turning the mics on, I'm a big proponent of conversation, but so much of it just seems to be cocooning for both sides. Now you mentioned armed America coming out around the time of another shooting. Can you tell me what the response was? Yeah, my book came out on-- I went up for sale on midnight of the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, which was in I think 2007. And a reporter asked me that day if I thought that it was oddly ironic or appropriate or something like that. And I thought at the time that it's never going to be not appropriate. That book is never going to be not topical. This is, I think, intrinsically part of America, this debate. And I think it's going to go on for-- Now why do you think that is? Again, in that process of interviewing people, or at least asking that one question, did you come across some notion of America that-- or why guns are so central in the culture? Well, what I did learn is that there is no single mono culture, there is no gun culture. There are many gun cultures, which are fighting it amongst each other daily. But guns are a huge part of many people's lives, and they have been a part of their lives from the beginning. And I think it's going to be very difficult for somebody to convince a lot of Americans that this is something that they need to stop. Again, do you think that argument goes anywhere in the wake of what just happened in Connecticut? I do. I think that there are many, many gun owners who will be amenable to stricter gun control. But there are also many gun owners who will not. And this is one of the things that has created tension amongst gun owners. And I really can't speak for gun owners. I can speak for somebody who has talked to a lot of gun owners, who has seen gun culture kind of firsthand. But I think that there are many gun owners who are moved by something like this. And there are very entrenched sides in this argument. I think you're going to-- if you look on Facebook, I'm sure you can see them today, that there are some people saying, if we had outlawed guns, then this wouldn't have happened in the school. And on the same Facebook page, you're going to see somebody saying, if those teachers in that school had had guns, then they could have stopped this person. So I wanted my first grade teacher to be packing heat. And I think that there are probably plenty of first grade teachers in places in America who would do that. And I think growing up in different places and surrounded by different people, we all live in bubbles. And I think if we all switched homes, if I moved from the Center of Center City, Philadelphia, where I live, if I moved to rural Kansas, my worldview would be very different in two years. And that's because we have different problems and different concerns based on our geography. America is a place with incredibly diverse geography. And that has an impact on people. I was in Wyoming several years ago. And I was in a place that was 60 miles from the nearest big town. And in the big town was a Walmart. And in the Walmart, you could get a polo shirt and you could get a canoe paddle and you could get food. You could get cottage cheese and you could get a record. And for the first time, I had an understanding, a different understanding of what Walmart might be to some people. And I always thought, well, you can't buy stuff at Walmart because it's this-- no, it's not right to buy things to everyone. And then I thought, well, if I was living 60 miles from the nearest town and I could get all of the things in one place, suddenly it made-- That's where it went initially. I mean, the companies headquartered in Arkansas wasn't an urban or suburban phenomenon like that. And it's the geography of America that makes Walmart desirable in rural Wyoming. But not desirable in downtown Philadelphia. If you put a Walmart down here, it's going to drive out my little hardware store across the street and it's going to drive out my little corner Bodego food place, which I don't necessarily want to happen. But when that's the only place that you have to go get things and you can make your one trip of 60 miles to get your film developed and buy a belt, then suddenly I had an epiphany there thinking, oh, I understand something that I didn't understand yesterday morning. And one of the big things that I understood about coming through armed America is that solutions to problems are much more difficult than you probably think they are. In terms of implementing consensus and-- In terms of everything. In terms of everything. In terms of understanding why somebody does something. twice a year we visit my in-laws in rural Louisiana. And it's always great for me because I'm coming from this northern New Jersey cocoon and just seeing other people, other ways of life. And again, the geography and what it means not to be living in 20 mile proximity of New York City, it can be a very different world. And this is something that exists throughout so much of the work that I do as a documentary photographer trying to meet people and understand people rather than rather than just looking at somebody on the surface, but to sort of get to know somebody. And which is mostly what I try to do as a journalist is to give a broader perspective of what people's lives are like. With your most recent book, which came out earlier this year, I believe, Warpaint, you're covering tattoo art among the armed forces, what was the impetus for that one? How did you start? I have a lot of friends who have tattoos. I don't have a tattoo. And I was trying to think, what would I want on my skin forever? What would I never get bored of? I really liked Scooby-Doo, and I was 10. I would be sad if I had a Scooby-Doo tattooed on me now. But I started to think that there are experiences that people can go through that really change their lives. And I'd met an 85-year-old man at a paratrooper tattooed on his arm, and I asked him about it. And I found out that he parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and fought his way across France. And I realized that if I had an experience like that, that's probably something that I wouldn't mind putting on my skin forever. I mean, that's something that changes your life in an indelible way that you may want to mark yourself up indelibly to commemorate. And I realized that nobody was writing down the stories of these tattoos and that somebody should do that. And also, at the same time, this was during when we were fighting war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I had many of my friends who had been to Iraq, been to Afghanistan. We have an entire generation of people. I mean, I've been fighting this war for 10 years, but longer than that, an entire generation of people who have been sent overseas to fight and come back. And I wanted to do something that would draw attention to that and that would let people hear their stories. Because I think that as Americans, we are culpable for what America does. We're part of it. And it's easy to do things or to let things happen if you're not paying attention to them. And I wanted to do something that would cause people to sort of stop for a minute and understand a bit of what people had been through. We're going through how people's lives might have been changed by something that we are doing. We are sending people to fight somewhere. And I wanted people to be more cognizant of that. How did you start canvassing soldiers? How did you start getting in stories and finding art? It seems that everybody knows somebody. And especially tattoo artists certainly know people. And people have brothers and sisters and husbands and wives who are in the military. And it wasn't that terribly difficult. I would go to Los Angeles or Seattle or something like that. And I would post my blog that I was going to be in this particular town. And people would say, oh, you know, you shouldn't meet my brother or my next-door neighbor or my grandfather. And so it was sort of like that, which was kind of the same way that I did it with Armed America, is that I would find one person and then sort of have them be a person on the ground who would collect a few people before I got into town and then that would do interviews and photos. Yeah, comfortable during Armed America. How comfortable were the subjects letting you into their home and shooting? Was there any, I want to say, stereotyping on their side, but any sort of feeling the fear of exploitation on their end? Yeah, absolutely. Because this is something that I think would be easy to do a book that ridiculed people or to make people do that. And I wondered if they suspected or feared that? It would be something that-- and people are trusting you when they let you into their house, which is why I was so upset with Jill Greenberg when she photographed John McCain and made him look. She Photoshopped him to look terribly bad. Oh, yeah. And I thought, you are making my life much more difficult than when I say that I am a journalist from the East Coast and I would like to come into your house and hear your story. And I really held that as a sacred trust that I would treat people as well as I possibly could. And in my mind, I pretended-- this was the backstory in my hand-- that I was going to photograph people who are cancer survivors. As though I had been sent out to do that, that's my job. That's a lot of reverence. So I wanted to make-- well, I wanted to try to detach myself from it being gone. So I wanted to make a beautiful portrait of somebody, something that they would be happy with. And there are 265 people in the book. And no one had said they were unhappy with their picture, which is kind of a new record from me. And it was a rousing success. And now I-- but there were certainly people who were concerned about my intentions. And it was very difficult to get people early on. But once I had about 10 pictures in my portfolio, I could show people and they could look at it and they could say, ah, I understand what you're doing. And there's certainly people who weren't interested in being in it. But once I could show people what I was doing, it got a lot, a lot easier. Did it change your impression of-- well, this leads to my question. Do you want a piece? Do you have a gun yourself? You don't have a tattoo. When I first started, Arm in America, I went to a local gun range. And I said, hey, I'm an unbiased journalist. And I'm looking to do a portrait series of gun owners. Can you introduce me to some? And they were like, get out of here, Sarah Brady. And I thought, ah, I have to be much more careful about this. And I realized that I hadn't done any research. And I didn't want this to be like a fish out of water story, which-- and I started-- that was the first time that I really started thinking about where am I going with this story? Where am I coming from with this story? And how am I treating my subjects? And so I went to the local drugstore and I subscribed to every gun magazine that they had there. And I went to a different gun range in Philadelphia. And I said, I'm interested in buying a gun. And they said, oh, we can totally help you. What do you want to do? And it was a much different interaction. And I said, oh, I think I would like to become very good at target shooting. And they spent a lot of time with me, helped me buy a wonderful target pistol. And then I started going like I was practicing for the Olympics. I went three times a week. And I was always there. I was better than therapy. It was therapy. It was therapy. And I got to meet people. And I don't think I asked anybody if I could photograph them for maybe three months. Because then it was like I was a person who was there all the time. I knew people there. I'd met people there. You know, we'd talked about things. And so it was a lot easier. And then there's another guy in the book who's got a shotgun, which is in a bucket. It's in pieces in a bucket. It was a sculptor. And he'd been making a sculptor of a duck hunter. And so he'd molded this shotgun. And when I was leaving, he said, well, do you want this? It's just been in a bucket in my closet for five years. And I said, yeah, sure. And then I met a father-in-son who'd been shooting clay pigeons once a month for the past 15 years or something like that. And they said, you should come with us. And I said, well, you know, I have this shotgun. And I'm a vegetarian. So I wouldn't shoot a bird, you know. Put a hunk of clay. A deer or something like that. But the idea of shooting clay pigeons sounded interesting. So I went and I had a terrific time doing that. Yeah, held on to them, never said. Yeah, they're still here. OK. That's OK because I wonder about participating in a culture as opposed to documenting it. What sort of cultures were you, well, documenting prior to that? I thought it was a lot of music subcultures before that. It's done a lot of projects on goths and punk rockers. And it's gotten, I think, more focused since then. I was asking much more, you know, kind of scattershot, random things before "Under America" came out. And that really focused me, I think, in thinking that I would like to pick one particular thing and focus on it for a long period of time, which became the war veterans. And then after that, I started photographing science fiction authors in the places that they write. So I'm really interested in the things that people surround themselves with. So I started photographing science fiction authors and their desks are the places that they write. And then very recently, I started photographing roller derby players because that was something else that interested me. And that's been really terrific, too. And all of these things have been really interesting in very different ways. And they've all changed me and influenced me. What common threads do you see in these various subcultures? Or do you see aspects of yourself and why you're interested in particular ones? I certainly see aspects of myself in every single one. When I was photographing gun owners, there was a guy, and he had seven rifles from World War II. And I didn't realize this, but every piece of industry in America during World War II was turned towards the war effort. And he had seven identical rifles. And I asked him, why do you have seven identical rifles? And they weren't identical. They-- one was made by Remington Rand. One was made by International Harvester. One was made by the Singer's sewing machine company. So all of these industries are retooled for the war effort. Yeah, and I said, well, do you need all these guns? And he said, do you have cameras that you don't need? And I thought, yeah, I love collecting cameras. I have a whole bunch of cameras that I will never use. I have shelves full of cameras. And if somebody gives me one, I will take it. And there are cameras that I want that I would never take a picture with, but I want this. So I saw this guy collecting seven rifles. And I saw myself collecting seven old blankets that I'm probably never going to use, but on a shelf somewhere. And I think with the roller derby players, I saw this ability or desire or some sort of psychological quirk that makes somebody look at some crazy goal in the future and say, I'm going to do that. And I'm going to devote everything I have to doing that. With an awesome nickname. That's an awesome nickname. So I certainly found a lot of my own obsessions in photograph and roller derby players. And science fiction authors, I read all the time, and I have a messy desk. You wonder what theirs are like? I'm fascinated by what other people's environments look like. And what's the weirdest thing you've seen on an SF writer's desk? That would actually, I think, be Chip Delaney, who's a science fiction author who lives in New York. And the Nebula Award is one of the greatest awards you can possibly get in science fiction. And it's a beautiful thing. It's a clear piece of loose sight about eight inches tall and maybe five inches square. And it's the thing that every science fiction writer wants to get. And Chip Delaney has a lot of books in his house. Thousands and thousands and thousands of books. And he had so many books on one bookshelf that it had collapsed. And it fell to the ground and spilled its contents out everywhere. And he thought, well, what can I do to get this shelf back up? And he said, ah, I'll prop it up with four Nebula Awards. So there is a shelf in Chip Delaney's house, which is held up from the ground by four of the most coveted awards in his field. And he sees them very practically as something that's exactly the right size to hold up this shelf full of books. There's one a bunch. Now, is there a holy grail author for you? Is there somebody you really want to get? Or somebody you regret? I noticed in your roster of people you had Harry Harrison, who died recently. Were there any others that you-- oh, god, I wish I got this guy in the last couple of years. Oh, you know, I certainly wish that I'd photographed Ray Bradbury. I mean, I guess I would. And living holy grails? Who would you really, really want to get to? Well, you know, there are different types of holy grails. I mean, it would be nice to have J.K. Rowling, you know? But I'm not sure that her office would be as interesting as Harry Turtle Dove's. So, you know, Harry Turtle Dove is, I think, probably very idiosyncratic author, who probably has a very interesting desk. And it's probably much more interesting than J.K. Rowling's desk, because I'm sure J.K. Rowling has a personal assistant who makes sure that her desk is neat. And all of the in stuff is in the out stuff is in one place. So, you know, they're both people that I would really like to have in the book. But for very different reasons, I think the Harry Turtle Dove's office would probably be more interesting to me. But I think that more people would probably like to see J.K. Rowling's office. I'm sure. How did you get started with that project? I had a friend who asked me if I could get tickets to a Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention, because this editor named Gardner Dozawa was going to be there. And he wanted to get Gardner Dozawa's autograph. And he said, could I get these tickets to this convention? I had never been to a science fiction convention before, and I hadn't read any science fiction since the '80s, probably. And I said, sure, I'll get the tickets. And I got tickets. And the day before he called up, and he said, oh, I actually can't make it. So I was left having to go on my own. And I thought, wow. And I thought, I don't want to go to this unprepared, because I have this horrible like phobia that I can't go to anything without knowing, you know, everything about it. So I read the list of everybody who was going to be there. And there was an author on there named Tom Pertum, who I photographed a couple years before for a magazine. I thought, ah, I'll go to this panel that Tom Pertum is on. And so I read the biographies of everybody else's on the panel, and one of them was for an author named Michael Swanwick, who they said is a very famous science fiction author who's won seven Hugo Awards. Hugo Award, like the Nebula's and top awards and science fiction. I said, wow, this man is won seven Hugo Awards. He must be fantastic. So I read his biography, and I read one of his stories. And so Michael Swanwick was one of the very few people that I knew about. And I went to the science fiction convention. I got in line to get my ticket. And I looked over and standing right next to me, was Michael Swanwick, the only person who I knew in the place. And I said, Michael, I'm coming to your thing. And he said, do you have directions? And I thought, it's in the hotel, isn't it? Sure. And I said, no, I don't have directions. And he dug in his bag, and he gave me the sheet of paper. And I said, Michael Swanwick's party for out of town science fiction authors. And he might have thought that I was somebody he was supposed to have recognized, because I greeted him so enthusiastically, because I was kind of tense about being there. And so I thought, well, I'm not going to let serendipity slip through my fingers. So I went to Michael Swanwick's party for out of town science fiction authors that night. And I was able to text my friend, saying, not only did I meet Gardner Dozwa at the Science Fiction Convention, but I am at a party, and he is sitting on the couch next to me. And so during this party, I said to Michael Swanwick, I understand that you have seven Hugo words, could I see them? And he said, certainly. And he took me upstairs to his office, and he turned on the light. And suddenly, I knew what my next book was going to be. Well, I was just this vast expanse of stuff. Just books piled everywhere, and various Hugo words, and some Nebula words, and things like this. And it was a most fascinating, creative space that I had seen. And I thought, I really need to start photographing this. And I photographed-- I said to Michael, can I come back and photograph you in your office? And he said, yes, but I'll have to clean it first. And I begged him not to. And he said, you will not be able to stop me, nor will you be able to tell that I have done so. So I went back, and I photographed his office. And he opened up his Rolodex and called all of the most famous science fiction authors in America, and said, you should let this guy come down and photograph you. How does that process work? I always think of SF culture as much more fan network driven than other literary-- Oh, certainly. I wonder how easy was it with that impromature from him to-- It was-- I mean, there's been only one author who's actually turned me down. And-- Who shall say Nameless I've said? Who will remain nameless? Who was concerned that his office would be too messy, and I said, oh, no. No, it won't. Especially now that you've been to Chip Delaney since. Yeah. So it's been very easy, because it's not me calling somebody up. It's not me calling Harry Harrison and saying, hey, can I come over to your house? It's Ben Bova calling Harry Harrison and saying, hey, can this guy come over to your house, or Joe Haldeman, or somebody like that. So the Rolodexes are small in the science fiction world, and everybody knows everybody else. Now, what was your biggest geek out moment in both this project and in shoots overall? Who have you had that, oh, my god, I can't believe I'm photographing? Yes. Fred Poll, actually. He was a science fiction author. And he was one of the-- he was the second wave of science fiction authors, which had included Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and those people. And I think Fred Poll might be the only one of those guys left now. And I got to his house, which is outside of Chicago. And it suddenly dawned on me that I'm at Fred Poll's house. And I felt like I couldn't speak properly, and I didn't want to get out of the car. So I think that was probably the big time. And have you had that big time in your music shoots or anything else, is there any other celebrity culture that sort of covers it? Yeah, I got really tongue tied around Elizabeth Elmore, photographing Elizabeth Elmore a few years ago. I realized that I couldn't speak properly. But that happens less and less. And it happens usually only when it's a sudden thing, when you're suddenly thrust into a room. And there's somebody there, and you think, well, I have nothing to say. Now, how did you get started in photography? What's your history? Well, I grew up in the '70s, and journalists seemed to be having a huge impact on the world. And there was a Vietnam that was going on, and a Watergate was happening. And these people seemed like heroes. People were reporting-- I remember the news we covered, the Kent State shootings, and even later, the pictures from Jonestown stuck out to me. And I realized that wherever stuff was going on is where these people were. And I kind of wanted to be part of that. I wanted to see everything. I wanted to be a part of everything. And photography's been a really good way to sort of cheat me to the top of circles that I would normally have to work very hard to get to. I now have Chip Delaney's phone number in my Rolodex. And press credit showing a camera was enough to get you into places. Oh, certainly. And when you're working for the media, they send you to places. It's a lot easier then than just being a kid with a dream. Now, photography changed over that time. I mean, in terms of digital, in terms of dissemination, what's it really? Oh, it's gotten an awful lot easier for one thing. I used to spend, I don't know, maybe two hours in the dark room every night, which is now a free time for me to goof off on Facebook. And certainly the way that things have gotten so much easier to do in terms of checking your lighting and things like that. I mean, it used to be you would take pictures and you would just hope that you got it. And now it's very easy to say, oh, you know, I need to move that light a little bit to the left. Let me try something different here. So it's opened up a huge realm of experimentation. It was very difficult to do before it's made things so much easier for photographers. Do you have any sort of, you mentioned the McCain thing. Do you have any sort of reservations about particular effects or any post-processing that you really just tell yourself, I will never do that? Oh, yeah. There are certainly things which I think are very kitschy and aren't helping people who have discovered the technique. In the '70s, it was the star filter, you know, and I'm sure you've seen this in the K-Tel record commercials. You know, the best little songs and they have some man and a woman and they're having dinner and there's a candle and they have a star filter on it so that candle makes a, you know, the flowy star, yeah, a flairy star, you know, which was and a haze filter, you know, and make it sort of dreamy looking, which was probably the epitome of bad photography in the '70s and I think that HDR has probably become the new star filter because it's this high dynamic range photography that makes things look crazily colored and things like that and it's so easy for people to take that too far and also a lot of stuff that you'll see where people have desaturated the whole, you know, like a bride holding a bouquet and everything's desaturated, black and white, except for her bouquet and her blue eyes or something like that, you know, which is stretching and it's the kind of stuff that you see in photo clubs all the time, you know. - Is there a sense, though, of a sense of devaluing of what you do and being a professional, I suppose, given the explosion and amateur? - Well, I mean, there are two sides of that coin. One is that everybody has the ability now to take pictures. Everybody's a photographer now, which has done, I think, a lot of good stuff for us. I mean, I look at YouTube and I see, you know, funny cat videos all the time that wouldn't have happened otherwise because people wouldn't have had a camera there, you know, and I've gotten great joy out of that and we have events around the world. I mean, look at the stuff that was happening during the Occupy protests for months. The only people who are getting pictures out of that were the people who are inside it. You know, and it wasn't really being covered by the mainstream news media, which is stuff coming across on Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that. So, on the one hand, it's really kept things that otherwise might have gone unnoticed from going unnoticed. On the other hand, it's probably easier to have a really bad picture on your album cover now, you know, which happens too. So, you know, there are good and bad things that on the whole, I don't think you can really make a comparison that it's gotten worse. I don't think you can really justify that argument. It's gotten much better. And there are a lot more bad pictures out there, but there are a lot more good pictures out there and there are a lot more things being covered that weren't covered before. There are a lot more things being shown that weren't being shown before and that's because of the ubiquity of cameras and everybody's phone, which is a very good thing. - I think that's everything. I think we've managed to hit on every question I have. That's great. Kyle Cassidy, I want to thank you so much for your time and I appreciate your making a space for me in the house, the way people let you in for Armed America, which I should mention, Armed America is available in bookstores and on Amazon as is Warpaint. - Warpaint, yes, which is the new one. - Thank you. - Very much for your time. - Thank you. - I appreciate it. - Thanks for having me. (upbeat music) - And that was Kyle Cassidy. Armed America and Warpaint are both available from Amazon and Good Bookstores. And you can check out Kyle's photography and his blog at kylecassity.com. This is the final episode of the virtual memories show for 2012. I have a few more recorded, but I don't want to post during the holidays when frankly we all have better things to do. You can subscribe and find previous episodes of the show at the iTunes store or visit the virtual memories blog at chimeraobscura.com to visit the archives. I've had a really great time doing the show this year and I think 2013 is gonna be even better. Till then, I'm Gil Roth and you are awesome. Keep it that way. (upbeat music) ♪ Keep it that way ♪ ♪ Keep it that way ♪ ♪ Keep it that way ♪ ♪ Keep it that way ♪ ♪ Keep it that way ♪ ♪ I'm gonna give you a good ♪ ♪ Share my dreams ♪ ♪ So baby, I'm gonna give you a good ♪ ♪ Share my dreams ♪ (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]