Gun Show was a collaboration between Paul Amenta and photographer Terry Johnston and was featured in the Michigan - Land of Riches exhibition.
This video project consisted of 163 images shot on-site at the decommissioned Grand Rapids Public Museum in a defunct moose diorama, long after the taxidermy specimens had been extracted in 1994.
The subjects in these images consisted of the artists, collaborators, museum staff and volunteers who participated in creating the exhibition. Each individual posed with their choice of one of four rifles from the Public Museum’s permanent collection. Originally we planned to dictate their poses, but what became far more interesting was the unique way each subject naturally responded once they held the gun in their hands. Their choices were a 16th century Turkish rifle, an American Civil War era rifle with bayonet, a WWII Japanese rifle with bayonet, and a WWI German rifle with bayonet.
photo credit: Terry Johnston