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Chapters (79)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Praise for Destroy All Monsters
  77. Books by Sam J. Miller
  78. Back Ad
  79. About the Publisher

I wrote an essay to accompany my project, and built a website for it. I ran it by Cass, who edited my sentences and challenged me to go deeper in what I wrote. About the photography, she had nothing to suggest. Just nodded a lot, flipping through the prints, lips pressed tightly together in a very slight smile. One that carried pride, and happiness, and something else—something I had seen in myself and never imagined I could inspire in another person: the complex pleasure of artistic experience, the telltale tingle down the spine. When she handed them back to me, she said only: “You did it, Ash.”

I wrote:

Football players. I hate them, and I’m scared of them.

They are big, they are strong, they are powerful. I see them coming down the high school hallway and I flinch. Every letterman jacket and team-color cap makes me think of date rape, gay bashing, drunk driving. Every bad thing society expects a boy to be, they become.

That’s how it seemed to me, anyway.

But I knew that wasn’t the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. Because they are people, whatever else they might be. I embarked on this photo essay because I wanted to understand. . . .

Under each image, I wrote a short paragraph.

I published it on a Tuesday, and I tagged a bunch of my favorite photographers and photography blogs into the posts I did on social media. I slid into the direct messages of editors and influencers, asking them to take a look at what I had done. What I had made.

Some people liked it. It got some retweets. Not a ton. By the end of the day I was ready to accept that I would not be going viral, blowing up. I was fine with that. That had never been my goal.

We live in a small town. Everybody is up in everybody else’s business. When I started photographing these boys, I already knew things about all of them. Good things—who volunteered at the local mosque, who had stood up to a racist bully in seventh grade—and bad things. Who had hit a friend of mine, when they were dating. Who told offensive jokes, because he liked to see people squirm.

But I didn’t do this because I wanted to tell anyone’s secrets. I did it because I wanted to find a deeper truth, about who they are. A truth with a capital T.

I wanted to understand them. I wanted to be less scared, of the things they do. The crimes people commit. The way we participate in their misdeeds by turning a blind eye. And I wanted to hold them accountable for the damage that they do.