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While reading the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, where she works as a freelance photographer, An-Sofie Kesteleyn came across a story about a 5-year-old boy in rural Southern Kentucky who accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister while playing with his gun.
Not a gun, but his gun.
It was a smallish rifle manufactured specifically for young children, in hot pink, orange, royal blue or multicolor swirls and advertised with the slogan “My First Rifle.” Immediately, she knew she had found her next personal project.
Ms. Kesteleyn grew up in Belgium and had never seen a real gun, except on policemen’s belts. But she would soon see more guns in one month than she had in her entire life when she traveled to the United States and went from gun shops to shooting ranges looking for families who had bought these playfully colored guns for their children.
Knowing little about firearms or American gun culture, Ms. Kesteleyn, 26, wanted to learn and decided to take a neutral stance about what she was seeing. She was surprised to find that the families she photographed were all hypervigilant about gun safety, kept the guns locked in safes and carefully taught their children how to carry and use firearms properly. All of the families of the 15 children she photographed fervently believed that by training their children they were ensuring their safety — protecting them both from gun accidents but also from potential attackers.
“The parents of the children I photographed think that all the criminality that happens in America happens because bad people get guns in their hands and if every good person had guns everyone would be safer,” Ms. Kesteleyn said.
Some of the parents hunted, but for most, shooting was “a sport that was fun,” she added. At times, it seemed to her that it was more fun for the parents than for some of the 5- to 8-year-old girls she photographed who wanted to play as their friends did.
Because most of the parents discussed self-defense and their fear of attacks, Ms. Kesteleyn asked the children to write about their own fears, and she presents their writings and drawings next to their portraits.
The project was undertaken for the World Press Photo’s prestigious Joop Swart Masterclass for young photographers, for which Ms. Kesteleyn was chosen.
Although Ms. Kesteleyn had never held a gun before, she tried one of the little pink rifles at a birthday party for an 8-year-old girl that was held at a shooting range.
“The bullets are very tiny and the guns are really light,” she said. “It was really too small for me.”
She was given 30 bullets and shot at a target, hitting it occasionally, but didn’t really understand the attraction, she said. “I wanted to try it,” she said. “But probably won’t do it again.”
At the start of the trip, Ms. Kesteleyn stayed with a family who owned a shooting range. One day they surprised her with a large machine gun, mounted on a tripod, and encouraged her to try.
“It was very scary to me, but they were pumped and wanted me to do it,” she said. “You can’t compare it to these little rifles I photographed. I tried it, but it was really horrible to me and it reminded me about war because we don’t even have guns where I am from.”
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