The increasing ubiquity of gun violence has become the norm across the world and particularly in the United States, where we have begun to hear horror after horror on a daily basis. So much so that it has started to produce a numbing effect, a helplessness that allows us to hear the news and say, Here we go again, and put it out of our mind. Gun violence is now something we expect to happen.

The book SHOT is about people who have been shot and survived the experience. It portrays 101 survivors, aged 8 to 80, from all races and many ethnicities. They are the representatives of survivorhood. Most were photographed in the location where they were shot.

Kathy Shorr was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a photographer whose work crosses the borders of documentary, portraiture, and street photography. She received her undergraduate degree in photography from The School of Visual Arts. Shorr also has an Masters in Education that was received while working as a New York Teaching Fellow in public schools in crisis. Her work has been shown in galleries in New York City and was featured in the celebrated Visa pour lImage in Perpignan, France. She lives and works in New York City.

Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration. He is also an Affiliate Professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and the Department of Public Health Sciences.

He is Co-Director of The University of Chicago Crime Lab and a committee member of the Center for Health Administration Studies (CHAS) at the University of Chicago.

He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health. His research appears in such journals as Addiction, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, Pediatrics, and Social Service Review.

A 2012-14 Robert Wood Johnson Investigator in Health Policy Research, Professor Pollack has been appointed to three committees of the National Academy of Sciences. He received his undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. He holds masters and doctorate degrees in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Before coming to SSA, Professor Pollack was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University and taught Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

His writings have appeared in Washington Post, the Nation, the New York Times, New Republic, and other popular publications. His American Prospect essay, Lessons from an Emergency Room, Nightmare was selected for the collection Best American Medical Writing, 2009.

Andrew DeMuro, Regional Director, Chicago, Guitars Over Guns. Guitars Over Guns is an after school program that pairs at-risk adolescents with professional musicians who use contemporary music to reach and teach these young people the skills they need to be successful in and out of school. 

David Crump, Manager, Violence Recovery Program, University of Chicago Medical Center. He was recruited to Brigham & Women's Hospital and the University of Chicago Medical Center to help create and start a violence recovery program. For the past 16 years, David has managed two independent living programs for youth in the Department of Social Services. While at Brigham & Women's Hospital, he ran the only house in Massachusetts serving young adolescent men, who were victims of gun violence. He then worked as an outreach/streetworker responding to incidents of community violence as they ocurred supporting families and victims while negotiating ceasefires and interrupting violence. For the past 28 years he has brought people together through hip-hop events, facilitated mediation/peace circles between rival crews and produced events and showcases in Austin, Texas & Boston.

Ondelle Perteet and Mariam Pare, Chicago, Survivors of gun violence

Other participants and moderator TBA