Skin in the Game

By (photographer):   Kevin N Garrett
Designed by:   Hector Sanchez
Other:   Echo Montgomery Garrett
Imprint:   Lucid House Publishing LLC
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 3mm
Weight:   91g
ISBN:   9781950495689
ISBN 10:   195049568X
Pages:   42
Publication Date:   10 March 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

As a commercial lifestyle photographer most of my days are spent making images of happy people in lovely settings, living their best life. Once in a great while as an artist, you get an opportunity to make a big difference in a human rights issue, an opportunity to change the way people think about a topic through images. That's what the ""Skin in the Game: Circumcision Cuts Through Us All"" campaign to raise awareness of and end medically unnecessary circumcision of babies and children is for me. Even though nothing in my portfolio showed the kind of iconic images that could make people change their minds about subjecting babies to circumcision, I shared my vision of activism through storytelling and images with Georganne Chapin, founding executive director of Intact America, a nonprofit, is dedicated to ending the routine practice of removing the foreskins of baby boys in the United States and supporting the boys and men, who have been traumatized and harmed by an unnecessary surgery that has become the cultural norm. We brainstormed and came up with the ""Skin in The Game: Circumcision Cuts Through Us All"" campaign. In April and June of 2023, I photographed more than 80 participants during two photo shoots in Atlanta, Georgia, and one in Dallas, Texas. Our team made black and white images that connect the viewer to the subjects in an emotional way that draws the viewer into the pain, anger, regret, and sorrow caused by male infant circumcision. Men and women of all races, ethnicities, and all ages are affected, and they each have a powerful story to share. The images are striking in their reduction of visual elements around the subjects. We made the choice to have everyone in denim jeans and simple black tee shirts, to photograph on a stark white background, under classic lighting schemes. This structure highlights the humanity and unifies us as all similar. My goal was to have the viewer's focus solely on the individual featured in the shot, to his or her face, to their emotion. Storytelling with images makes it impossible for us to walk away from injustice. Hector Sánchez is an award-winning creative director with more than 20 years of experience and is currently an associate creative director at Academy Sports + Outdoors -a billion dollar-per-year retailer with more than 23,000 employees located in 16 states across the South, Southeast, and Midwest of the US with over 245+ locations. At Academy Sports and Outdoors his primary role is directing internal and external teams that produce creative content and development of performance publishing and marketing assets for multi-channel campaigns, including social, email, display, direct mail, and more. Hector enjoys strategic vision and direction setting, but at heart, he's a creative problem-solver and mentor. Known for his wild creativity, especially with typography, Hector garnered several awards as creative director for multiple city magazines from ""Atlanta Magazine"" to ""Boston Magazine"" to the ""Washingtonian."" He was design director for ""Indianapolis Magazine."" He also redesigned ""South Magazine,"" and collaborated with ""Atlanta Home"" magazine, ""Texas Monthly"" and ""Texas Monthly"" custom publishing. He and Kevin Garrett collaborated on some of those award-winning articles for ""Atlanta Magazine,"" and reconnected to collaborate on ""Skin in the Game."" From the moment, Echo Montgomery Garrett--journalist, author, editor, and publisher--spoke with Georganne Chapin about circumcision, she knew she'd found a cause that was worth dedicating her time and energy to. When her sons were born, she'd questioned the routine practice, but at the time, she couldn't find a single friend, who had not had their sons cut. Besides pre-Google information on the surgery was in short supply. Working with Georganne, the founding executive director of Intact America, on Georganne's memoir, ""This Penis Business: A Social Activist's Memoir,"" Echo was astonished to learn that the practice had its roots in racism and classicism at the turn of the 20th century, and that the surgery became widespread in the wake of World War II when the birth process moved from midwives to fee-for-service hospitals. As a regret mom, Echo seeks ways to help spread the word that cutting off a boy's foreskin does irreversible harm and is a surgical procedure that carries plenty of risks with no reward. She has interviewed more than a hundred people on this topic and been with Georganne when she's fielded calls from people all over the country from distraught mothers' whose young sons have had their foreskins forcibly retracted to older men, who recently discovered Intact America's website and have questions that they'd been afraid to ask. Most of all, Echo shares Georganne's determination to expose the Medical Machine in the United States that peddles this painful, unnecessary surgery to expectant parents and the fact that circumcision and the results of it all add up to big business to the tune of almost $6 billion a year.