Bayeté Ross Smith's Take Aim project confronts gun violence in New York

Artist, photographer, and anthropologist Bayeté Ross Smith (USA, 1976) has launched Take Aim, a project exploring gun ownership and the history of firearms in the United States, organized in collaboration with For Freedoms. The project included a conference at Neue House moderated by Rujeco Hockley, curator of the Brooklyn Museum, with historian Pamela Haag, pediatrician Ramon Gist, and gun dealer Darren Lang of West Side Rifle & Pistol Range. A second event at the range allowed a dozen lottery-selected participants to shoot at a target made from their own portraits. Ross Smith, who teaches multimedia storytelling at New York University and the International Center of Photography, was recently hired by The New York Times as an expert for its Race/Related section on racism and discrimination. His interactive work Question Bridge: Black Males, funded and produced by actor and activist Jesse James, entered the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, inaugurated by Barack Obama on September 24, 2016.