Paintball's Homemade Battlefields

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The line between simulated and real warfare can sometimes seem scarily thin, as 'Play War,' a series of photographs by Ruth Dusseault, demonstrates. We present a brief selection here, with an introduction by Michael Shanks, courtesy of Places Journal.

You are looking at a world of gameplay, of simulated war, fought by an army of paintball enthusiasts who spend their weekends shooting one another with gelatin shells of colored dye. Paintball is an industry of equipment suppliers who rely on amateurs to design and build the playing fields. Typically, a few friends with a Bobcat construct a combat stage by incorporating whatever materials remain on the land from its previous use, and whatever can be salvaged nearby. Old agricultural machines, remnants of fallen buildings, shipping containers, cable spools, loading pallets, railroad ties, junked cars, concrete fittings, PVC pipes, obsolete communication towers: The detritus of an industrial century is pushed to the urban margins to create apocalyptic playgrounds. Collectively, these sites represent a range of military conflicts at home and abroad, past, present and future.

It takes some imagination to read these free-form interpretations of castles, spaceships, and Islamic villages. But for the 9 million players that use them, all that's needed is the symbolic form, a suggestion of meaning. Over the years, the sites take on new complexities, as buildings are layered with patchwork repairs and surfaces acquire an abstract expressionist patina of exploded pigment. They hold the memories of battles won and lost, testifying to the power of personal narrative. We were here then. That's where I caught them. Authentic hauntings.

Play War is a photographic survey of homemade recreational battlefields across the United States, tucked into the everyday landscapes that surround a disheveled middle class. Photographing these spaces and these warriors, one finds a keen and disarmingly honest form of creativity. Here, players can test their efficacy, their agency, their ability to make a difference in the company of friends and strangers. As expressions of potential realities, these spaces present an intricate relief of the culture that created them. They are also deeply intertwined with the real needs of the military.

Paintball draws dollars to low-value properties outside the urban perimeter, a cash boost at the rural edge. With GPS, remote locations and interstitial spaces are more accessible than ever. Gaming fields are hidden amid utility right-of-ways, light industrial zones, bankrupt big boxes, swampy plateaus, fallow farms, and fields of wild scruff around shopping malls and airports. Their scale varies, as does the ambition of their staged productions. The largest game is held annually in Oklahoma on a thousand acres of private land. At the other end of the scale are the many informal games held in provisional spaces. Airsoft enthusiasts, considered more "militant" because they use more realistic weapons and gear, rendezvous through coded MilSim websites. They infiltrate exurban backwoods and industrial ruins, where ravaged architectures complete the all-immersive experience of urban war.

These landscapes recall the "adventure playgrounds" of postwar Europe. After a blitz, residents would return to the rubble of their former lives to start rebuilding, dragging debris into a pile at the end of the block. The pile was designated a playground to occupy children while the adults worked. Calamitous kids used the garbage to build and destroy their own little war-torn worlds. Later, in the 1960s and '70s, municipal authorities across Europe and North America built playgrounds with forts and assault courses of netted climbing frames, monkey bars, and crenellated platforms — a ubiquitous architecture of competitive encounter.

Read and see more images at the always interesting Places Journal.