Everyone attending the Pyrotechnics Guild International Convention is way more into fireworks than you are. Each summer, these explosives aficionados gather to build one-of-a-kind rockets and see who can deliver the biggest blast. It’s a rowdy, week-long celebration of their craft, and Kevin Kunstadt caught last year's shindig for his series Iowa T-Storm.
The native New Yorker had never so much as lit a cherry bomb when he arrived in Mason City, Iowa, for the festivities. "I went impulsively," he says. "I had just seen a few pictures on the Internet." He signed the obligatory safety waiver, forked over the membership fee, and spent the next week getting schooled in the fine art of fireworks.
The convention started in 1973 and hits a different state each year. It draws thousands of people from across the country, many of whom make a family adventure of it. Some in the crowd have a military background, others are self-taught pyrotechnicians with a thing for DIY fireworks. More than a few simply enjoy blowing stuff up.
Kunstadt dove headfirst into the madness. He'd barely gotten his bearings before setting off his first rocket in a field set aside for such things. It was a popular place among people buying fireworks from a nearby tent selling everything from "Warheads" and "Super Big Bangs" to "Demon Eyes" and "Future Ex Wives."
He found a frightening number of people with a knack for taking fairly mundane fireworks to a terrifying level. For an exploit dubbed the "cracker burn," delighted enthusiasts wrapped thousands of firecrackers around a wood sawhorse, lit the fuse and ran like hell. "Firecrackers are what you imagine kids in the '50s playing with," Kunstadt says. "But when there are that many of them they become something else."
The deafening explosions sometimes shook his camera, a technical challenge more commonly associated with war photography. Kunstadt couldn’t help noticing how the destruction fueled a contagious sense of glee. That push and pull between risk and pleasure reverberates in every frame, and it’s part of what makes the images fascinating.
Still, the detonating fireworks wasn't nearly so dangerous as making them. The manufacturing tent contained a DIY zone cluttered with glue guns and hair dryers and other tools. And, of course, black powder. Lots of black powder, which is highly flammable. "I couldn’t bring flash photography," Kundstadt says.
Pyrotechnic experts also shared their secrets in classes and workshops. A movie effects specialist showed people how to blow up a car, and a former NASA rocket scientist explained the rapid combustions that make fireworks explode.
But the real stars were the mind-blowing fireworks shows. Once the sun went down, locals piled into the grandstand or set up lawn chairs outside. Amid their gasps and cheers, shells and rockets burst in air, filling the night sky with light and sound.
Kundstadt wasn't watching what was happening overhead. He was more interested in photographing the crowd illuminated by the blasts, or the surrounding cornfields and suburban sprawl. Shown under a neon glow, the otherwise ordinary faces and landscapes radiate wonder. In that way, he says, fireworks is like photography. Both involve "mundane components changing through a chemical reaction into something spectacular."
