Kintsugi is a 15th-century metal art dedicated to the restoration of fine ceramic pottery that uses a gold-infused epoxy to adjoin broken shards of pottery. The word Kintsugi means “golden rejoining.” In the philosophy of the ancient art form shards do not amount to being broken, pieces amount to potential and renewal. From a shattered reality emerges a necessarily new existence, a complete existence albeit with different marks and memory.

Too many Americans are calloused to the reality of gun violence. In the face of repeated news stories, endless data and deadlocked political attitudes, it is understandable that many Americans turn away from the excessive gun violence and its impact. In this context, photographs are a tricky medium. They’re designed to be studied and viewed but slowly we are primed to not look, to refrain from analysis, to relegate humanity because collective hurt, thus far, has not shifted the needle on gun-laws one bit.

“I am not a victim, but a survivor.” — Donzahelia Johnson

When we do look at photos of gun-related violence we tend to see bits, pieces of lives broken. We can play our own helplessness on a loop. This is dangerous if we impose it on the subjects of photographs. Beauty, fortitude, new civic commitment and many other positives can emerge from near disaster. Kathy Shorr’s portrait subjects are not broken, they are witnesses; they are not victims, they are survivors.

Many of the gun-violence survivors in Shorr’s new book SHOT have recovered against odds, put their lives back together and now taking an active role in inviting a public back into the tough dialogue about American gun violence.