The Circus Backstage

Holy hell it's shooty out there y'all. Had us another mass shooting here in Louisville last night, somebody fired into a crowded park, killing two and wounding four more. Brings our total for the week to at least eleven dead and somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty wounded. Shooter is still on the loose so that should be fun...

That's more than enough heavy shit for one week though, so instead I thought I'd show you the circus that accompanies these tragedies.

"I've never covered a mass shooting before." Was showing a Getty photographer around when he made that comment to me, both of us unfortunately got to mark that off our bucket lists. I've been around the press plenty but this time was something else entirely. Surreal, like there was some strange disconnect. Here was this terrible tragedy and just a little ways away you had the makings of a movie set.

The absurd disconnect between the two was enough to make me question why I was out there shooting. Are all of us just vultures out here feeding on tragedy? Told myself that documenting things means both the good and the bad but it still leaves a slightly queasy feeling.

May not be able to change that but I can at least show you what it looks like. This local newsie was doing a piece on how parents and children are working through their emotions after the shooting.
May have accidentally managed to photobomb one of her shots.

It wasn't just the press however, seemed like every religious group in the country had sent people here. These Jehovah's Witnesses were set up right across the street from Old National Bank and the makeshift memorial on its steps. Billy Graham's outfit had a crew lurking on the sidewalk in front of the bank, reminded me of the missionaries and their ulterior motives that frequented eastern Kentucky when I was growing up.

2020 was a nice lesson in how much is lost and left out in creating that polished product we call news. That just makes it all the more fun to turn the camera on the process of making that product.

There was an element of the absurd to all the seriousness and gravitas being projected. I'm sure it looked good on television but watching a bunch of expensively dressed people having serious talks with a camera in the middle of an otherwise deserted and sketchy parking lot that none of them would be caught dead in after dark just seemed a bit ridiculous.