Shooting Without the Guns

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that many of you know what Grand Theft Auto V is. (If you don’t you can check the VGX game of the year for 2013 here. Trigger warning: it’s violent and full of guns. I both hate and love this game. On one hand, it is an easily accessible tool used to glorify horrifically violent acts, on the other, it is a beautifully constructed, and interactive satire of contemporary America.

I have watched a number of my friends play this game. Punching people in the streets, blowing up cars, blowing up planes, blowing up buildings, blowing up the authorities that chase them for blowing up all this stuff, until finally they blow up themselves and start the process all over again. Described in this way the game may seem mindless, but this game is so much more than what it appears to be on the surface and I think it’s really worth paying attention to.

I don’t often play GTA V. The few times I have played it, I spent hours driving around the map playing taxi driver instead of actually fulfilling any of the quests, or shooting people as the storyline in the game demands you to. I had fun when I played (the people watching me play were bored as hell, but eh, I had fun). I like the game for what I made it to be; a beautiful, and hyperbolic insight into what the life of a taxi driver could be if he didn’t care about traffic laws. The game gives you that kind of power. While the quests direct you into a world of violent crime, and the game often gets condemned for how horrific it can be, -- I’m talking rolling people off of cliffs in the back of trunks, locking them in deepfreezes, or the numerous plot scenarios where there is implied, or obvious torture – parts of it are beautiful, like the the map which is modeled off of real Los Angeles or the carefully rendered graphics which make the game look realistic and all at once dreamlike.

I’m not saying that someone should look past the violence and play the game because some parts of it are good. I want to focus on something else… The complexity of the false reality this game creates. The game is so vast in has the ability to extend outside of itself. The game is so liveable it produces its own content. There is so much within it. The game has become numerous other things in addition to being a video game. I think this is what makes it phenomenal. Allow me to explain …

Enter Fernando Pereira Gomes -- Artist, photographer, avid GTA V player.

You should click his name and look at his work. He makes beautiful things. About a month ago my boyfriend (also a photographer) flipped his laptop screen around and told me to look at this article. I love street photography and was taken, particularly by these images:




The images were taken in-game, using a GTA V character’s phone, and yet, they were taken by Gomes who was surveying the streets for good shots via the game’s first-person perspective view.

Despite working within the limitations of the game, compositionally the photographs Gomes took mirrored his usual street art. By comparing and contrasting his usually street art and his GTA V street art, you can really see the parallels. As a photographer Gomes seems interested in removal of himself from the subject he is shooting. He has a few projects you can find on his website that deal with this. In 2012, before the games release Gomes published works in a series called Detached which sought to “abstract humans” to suit his composition.

In many ways, I think the GTA project was an extension of this one, but taken to a new extreme, the artist was so detached, he wasn't even shooting real subjects anymore. The result were these whimsically disconnected street photos. At first glance when you look at the Detached, it’s hard to distinguish between the photos shot in-game and those not.

From Detached 

GTA V Photo

From Detached 

GTA V Photo

In these images all we think we know about Grand Theft Auto V -- its violence, its hyperboles, its unrealistic or exaggerated human behaviour -- is completely lost. The game appears to be one step less removed from reality than it actually is. This is the wonder of it, that complexity that I mentioned earlier. The game has the ability to communicate reality intimately. As we participate in its world, we have the potential to manipulate it, to produce new content from it. It is a form of remediation, where the practice of street photography is taken into the digital world and recreated in a way that the product is similar but the means of achieving the product are entirely different.

I can’t help but think of the days I really wanted to take photos but thought the weather would destroy my camera. Honestly this is a pretty good solution, and I don’t think it’s something you can only do while playing GTA V. Can’t find inspiration in the real world? Easy, do as Gomes did and find a new world.