The Ameriguns by Gabriele Galimberti (2018–2020) was made across the United States — from New York to Honolulu, from Florida to Alaska — and examines Americans posing with their extensive firearm collections.
Against this backdrop of the Second Amendment’s long afterlife and recurring public debates about gun violence, the series emerged from a chance encounter in Kansas and grew into a cross‑country inquiry spanning roughly 35 states. Galimberti frames the work through four values—Family, Freedom, Passion, and Style—linking private arsenals to cultural narratives about self‑reliance, tradition, and consumer identity.
Building on this context, the project interrogates how freedom is imagined as personal security, how family rituals normalize early contact with weapons, how collecting and sport channel passion, and how style turns firearms into lifestyle accessories. It asks what happens when statistics—such as the United States holding a disproportionate share of the world’s privately owned guns—are translated into household scenes, where quantity becomes an argument.
Visually, the language is frontal and exhaustive: broad, centered portraits place sitters within homes, yards, or vaults so that weapons fill the frame in orderly grids, circles, stars, and even map outlines. The mood is hyper‑real and controlled; color underscores the consumer surface of metal and polymer. Technically speaking, the images are the product of staged naturalism: hours of arranging and lighting render every object legible. Galimberti typically works with full‑frame digital cameras with 35mm and 24–70mm lenses, artificial light from speedlights and studio heads, and restrained post‑production to preserve a documentary register.
Reception has been polarized, acting as a cultural mirror: outside the U.S., viewers often read the pictures as critique; within the U.S., responses range from alarm to admiration. The series won First Prize, Portrait Stories, at World Press Photo 2021 and garnered additional honors, while circulating widely online—especially after high‑profile shootings—where images were shared and debated at scale. Exhibitions have included Visa pour l’Image (Perpignan), Cortona On The Move, Rencontres d’Arles, and venues in the U.S. such as Austin, alongside publication as The Ameriguns (Dewi Lewis/Skinnerboox, 2020) with texts by Gea Scancarello. The project is widely discussed as contributing to the renewal of staged documentary portraiture that makes social statistics visible.
