Seeing the World Through X-Ray with Nick Veasey

March 26, 2024

Kyle McKenzie

CHANNEL Purse - X-Fay Scan - Spring Summer 2022

Published - Print

Feature Nick Veasey

Words by Kyle Mckenzie

When I first encountered Nick’s work, I was immediately drawn to how he reimagines objects. He invites viewers to see the familiar in entirely new ways. His blend of science, art, and technology challenges the typical associations we often make—like linking X-rays with bones. Through Nick’s perspective, these images take on deeper meanings. Our conversation began with Nick discussing his focus on an upcoming gallery exhibition, which led me to wonder about his process—and how he turned this into a full-time career.

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KYLE MCKENZIE (KM): [...] I DIDN'T GO TO COLLEGE.

AFTER HIGH SCHOOL I MOVED TO CALIFORNIA.

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NICK VEASEY (NV): Very similar to me. I didn't go to college either.

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Well, I did for one morning. I left on the lunch time of the first day. I went to the wrong college, I think that was my problem.

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I didn't go back to education until I was 26 and I did a degree over three years at night school. It was quite tiring because you sort of do a day's work. And then at 7pm to 9pm, four, three nights a week, you were studying.

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But that was in like a classroom environment. Nowadays, all these things are online, so you've got to be quite self motivated to do it online because it's easy just to say, Fuck that. I'm not doing that, you know?

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Oh everything was in black and white. So you're talking 1970 to about 1988 to 1990.

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KM: WERE YOU PRACTICING AS AN ARTIST THEN OR NO?

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NV: No. I was always into photography and I did loads of dead-end jobs up until I was about 25 y/o. And then I got a job in a printers where I was organizing the workflow. So I’d order the paper and the ink and say, you'd have 4 hours to print that. And then special folding and all this, you know, like for brochures and forms and that.

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And one of the clients was an advertising agency and the boss guy was going on vacation

and he said to me, Nick, could you look after the job we've got going on for this ad agency?

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So I said, Yeah, I'd love to.

So I met the owner of the advertising agency because it was their Christmas card with the printing, which sounds like nothing, but it's something they give to all their clients.

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And they want it to be something really impressive. And each year they want it to be better than last year's. I'd try to make it the most over designed, complicated thing ever. Which just says 'Happy Christmas'. When I went to deliver them, the boss was so happy.

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He said, "Look Nick, I'm going to give you the tour".

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So he gave me the tour of the building and I went down into the basement and there's all these Porsches and Ferraris.

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It was called a Progress Chaser. You had to kick people’s ass to do their job. That was my job. And I thought I learned a lot then really, about what other photographers were doing at the high commercial end. When you're doing advertising, photography, what's required and a lot of it really is having the faith in your own technique and your own ability.

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So I thought, well, I quite like the photography part of it, but I thought about the business side of it. So yeah, I continued with the photography side of it.

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And then I got into x-ray, maybe five years after I got that qualification in advertising, and that gave me enough of a response from the people I showed my photograph to, knowing that there was something in it that I could really pursue as a specialty

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xray bus ^[01]

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KM: IT'S COOL THAT YOU'VE BEEN ABLE TO CRAFT YOUR OWN LANE. AND A BIG QUESTION FOR ME WAS, HOW DO YOU MAKE IT ALL WORK SO SEAMLESSLY?

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NV: You know, all I’m doing is just making pictures, pretty pictures. I'm not a doctor. I'm not saving people's lives. So, you know, I've got a team and it's organized. And you have to have your shit together and you have to deliver to continue havinG success, but continue in business, you know, to support yourself in a creative industry, somehow you have to monetize it.

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KM: JUST GOING BACK TO LIKE FALLING IN LOVE WITH PHOTOGRAPHY (EARLY STAGES). WHAT SPARKED THAT PASSION?
WAS THERE SOMETHING YOU EXPERIENCED AS A CHILD?

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NV: My upbringing was really a normal suburban upbringing, a normal school with working parents who had no real sort of aesthetic qualities at all. Very corporate straight people.

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And sort of like most kids do, I wanted to rebel against that. So I started dressing a bit more creatively and going out with the girls that were crazy rather than the girls that were just pretty.

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I had a really good friend who was a sculptor, abstract painter. He didn't really get anywhere with his career, but the fact that he used to go to work all day on a construction site, come home, have a shower and then start his real job.

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And that I really admired, you know, because he was committed to it.

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And I think that's the one thing I've learned about any sort of brave, successful person is you have to go through that committed, almost obsessive, state. It's like a phase. You don't have to be like it all your life, but you have to go through that.

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You have to be that ass hole. Where you're just interested in one thing, nothing else matters as much as this one thing, which is total nonsense really, when you look back on it. But when you're in it in the middle of it, you believe it. And I've been through that with my career. My ex-rays. Which makes me, I guess, gives me the confidence to know that I'm the best at it.

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So what? There's no one else doing it, but if there was, I'd be better than them because I've taken it to places that nobody else has taken it to. But I also feel like I can stand next to my work in a gallery or a museum. And it may not be the best out in the world, but it certainly holds its own.

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KM: YEAH. TELL ME ABOUT THAT TIME PERIOD OF OBSESSION. AT WHAT TIME PERIOD IN YOUR LIFE WAS THIS?

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NV: I was probably around about 30. Yeah. And I wouldn't go out. Some days. I wouldn't even get dressed. I'd spend all day working in my dressing gown in my pajamas and I wouldn't eat, it was just was straight to work, work, work. Build up a portfolio, experiment, create new images, send off letters or physical portfolios.

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You didn't have the Internet in those days. So to try and get your work in front of people was a lot more drawn out and complicated and expensive because you'd have to physically send them something in the mail, which they could look at. But equally, I think people did realize, Wow, this guy spent a bit of time and money and made a nice presentation.

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KM: SO DURING THAT TIME. WERE YOU ALREADY CREATING THE X-RAY IMAGES ON NEGATIVE FILM?

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NV: Prior to my first breakthrough with X-ray I'd been working handling photography for advertising and graphic design. So I was doing it for ads and brochures and picture libraries and things. And it was good actually, because to start with, because of the radiation issue, a lot of people didn't understand how I did it.

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They still don't really….

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But normally when you work with a client, say you work with Porsche, they want to come, you know, they want to see what you're doing. They want to make sure you're not going to devalue their brand in any way. But I had the magic answer to that. I said, No, you can't come because it's dangerous radiation.

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You can't come, you've got to leave it to me.

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So I would do what I wanted to do when I wanted to. If I wanted to do a three in the morning , I would do it at three in the morning, If I wanted to do it at three in the afternoon, I'll do it.
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As long as I met my deadline, they didn’t care. So I used that excuse many times, I'm not trying to be lazy. In fact sometimes I would do more by working on my own than having somebody looking over my shoulder telling me, "do it again".

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But after a while I did find that I missed the collaboration between individuals, like we're flipping back and forth. I think sometimes when you work with someone who's got good ideas and integrity, they take you to places you don't get on your own. So after a while, if I like the vibe that was coming, then I would have a few clients come with me, but only a few one or two, no more 200 people on set.

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Because when you when you're there doing the X-rays, it's very different to photography because, if you're dealing with a corporate client and they're used to doing photo shoots, they'd say, Oh, send me a Polaroid or send me a test shot with X ray, you've done...

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You know I can then hold the x-ray up to the window and take a picture with my phone and send you that now and it gives you a rough idea. It's not that detailed but you can see the general thing but I used to try and avoid that as well. I just said no you can't see it til it's finished because very often because of the technical side of x ray, I would x ray the same object at three or four different exposures.

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Just trust me.
I’m the best.

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And they did. So yeah.

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KM: HAVE YOU EVER WORKED WITH ANY MOTION WHERE YOU ANIMATE IN 3D SPACE, LIKE ALL THE LAYERS KIND OF COMING TOGETHER, LIKE PARALLAXING?

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NV: Yeah. Where I do a lot of my x-rays of big objects. In Germany, they have the biggest X-ray machine in the world and that also does CT scans so that it can slice and stop through objects. And the one thing I don't like about all that is, though, is the software that you use to apply all those images.

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It looks quite synthetic to me. It gives it that sort of computer made thing. I'm really old school. I like things that are handmade, analog, and individual. I don't like it to look like it's made in a machine, even though I do use a machine.

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KM: YEAH. WOW. I STILL SHOOT C-41 AND SLIDE FILM.

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NV: Great. That's great. Good. Yeah, It's expensive now. You have to have patience because everybody is used to an immediate photograph, you know, we press the button on your phone or a camera and you get an image on the back of it straight away. So to go back to analog photography. You know, I applaud you.

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My early photography was all analog before X-ray. And you have that thing where you’d shoot in the back of the camera and you think you've got an image, but then you send it off for processing or printing. And that writing, that expectation, it's added to the tension of it. Make it more of a drama, more of an experience and make it more valuable.

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KM: YEAH, AND I THINK THIS IS GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF OUR CONVERSATION. THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE ARE KIND OF YEARNING FOR NOW. YOU KNOW, LIKE THEY WANT TO SLOW DOWN...

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NV: Same. Like you can go on Spotify and it feeds the music that you want, but after a while you're thinking, Stop feeding me. So I want to decide. I want to decide. So I'm buying back all the records I sold 20 years ago just so that I can have that experience of putting the vinyl on the turntable.

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Toggle Switch with X-Ray Vision

( •_•)

CLICK TO ACTIVATE X-RAY VISION

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KM: There's this deeper meaning behind your work that, gravitated me towards it. The way I stumble across the artists that I speak to. It's serendipitous.

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Because what you're saying about that hunger and the tunnel vision and the isolation is the mode I'm in right now.

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NV: My art is pretty art. My art isn't about death. It's more about irony. I'm just ironic. But when you look at say like, I know someone like Anselm Kiefer, the German guy, his work is about the Holocaust and really heavy shit like that.

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I really admire him because he's good and because he's got really strong metaphors in what he does and believes in himself and I think because of art, you've got the same principle, same approach at my level. Then you have that super upper tier.

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KM: I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR VIEWS ON SOCIETY LIKE EARLY ON AND HOW THEY'VE CHANGED?

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NV: Well you know, I guess it comes back to how you were brought up as a child. And my parents always said to me, Treat people like you want to be treated yourself. So if we all respect each other, the world’s a better place, in my opinion. But the interesting thing really is that, you know, you're younger and better looking than me, but inside we're the same thing.

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"Treat people like you want to be treated yourself. So if we all respect each other, the world’s a better place, in my opinion. But the interesting thing really is that, you know, you're younger and better looking than me, but inside we're the same thing."

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We're the same. We’re made of the same. So I'm trying to sort of level everything out. But particularly in your country, people are obsessed with bling. You got to have a flashy car, big house, beautiful wife, nice teeth, big tits.

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But it’s what's inside that really counts. That's the same metaphor in all my work that's the same idea behind everything I do and then I just divert it slightly, you know, to be more ironic, like with a Hermes bag, I'm thinking, why would you want to spend $80,000 on a handbag?

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And if you do, you've got no money left.

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KM: RIGHT. WHAT WERE SOME OF THOSE MOMENTS THAT YOU FELT VERY CHALLENGED WHEN YOU'RE WORKING WITH COMMERCIAL OR CORPORATE-ESQUE CLIENTS? WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES?

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NV: The biggest challenge was always try to explain to them why their logo hasn't come out on the x ray < both laughing >

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Where’s my logo?! Obviously on the back of your laptop, you can feel the Apple logo that would come out on the x ray, but if it's just printed on the surface, it doesn't come out.

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KM: YEAH. THAT'S SO FUNNY. I DID NOT EXPECT AN ANSWER LIKE THAT <LAUGH>

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NV: But people are worried about getting fired, I'd say sacked, but fired they’re worried about getting fired. So, you know. Oh my God, we spent $5,000 with this crazy limey doing these x-rays and I can't see my logo. I'm going to get fired that way. Like, we will put your logo back in - don’t worry!

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KM: PUTTING AI TO THE SIDE - WOULD YOU SAY TECHNOLOGY HAS EMBELLISHED YOUR WORK IN ANY WAY OR YOUR PROCESS?

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NV: Without Photoshop, you wouldn't be looking at my work. You wouldn't be looking at it. So Photoshop. Thank you.

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KM: WHAT WERE YOUR INITIAL INTERESTS WHEN YOU STARTED TO X-RAY FABRICS, MATERIALS, OBJECTS, ETC. WITHIN FASHION?

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NV: You know, as a young man. I was into fashion, I was into different youth cultures. I always sort of wanted to be in those beautiful, high quality, high end magazines. So One of the things I x-ray’d from the early stages was textiles, but the machines I first had access to weren't very high quality, so therefore they couldn't give particularly detailed nuances like pleating in garments, creases, stitching and stuff like that.

So luckily I got access to a better machine which sort of pushed me forward. And it's just a simple thing, like picking a shirt up and holding it with the sunlight coming through the room. You see it's like an x-ray then, you see the structure of the garment. You can turn a dress inside out and see the internal seams.

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So I'm not really revealing anything that nobody has seen before. You have seen this before. It's just you take something that is normally worn on a human and just treat it in isolation and then it almost becomes like it becomes like a subject of scrutiny. And you know, you have an amazing still-life photograph showing the texture of a leather jacket or underwear or something.

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But the x-ray just takes it to another level, just another stage where it's even more, in my opinion, anyway, it's even more beautiful. Slightly otherworldly. What am I looking at? You know? Is it a mirror? Is it in a light box? Is it a photograph? Is it? You don't really know It's an X-ray. It's not obvious it's an X-ray.

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Whereas if I X-ray your computer and you see the computer chip inside it, you know, it's an X-ray. But with a garment it’s like, oh, this is lovely.

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And then, you take away all the nonsense of those fashion magazines, too, you know, all that ridiculous, underfed streaky tool model in a glamorous location with the expensive stylists and all that sort of stuff... Strip all that away and look at the clothes and then think about how they transform you.

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KM: YUP, IT'S AN EXTENSION OF US. IT'S A WAY OF EXPRESSING.

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WHAT'S IT LIKE WORKING WITH MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES?

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NV: Well just like everything else in life. You get good and bad. And the great thing about museums is that they're a bit like those oil tankers. You know, once they're heading in one direction, they keep going. But it takes them a long time to turn around. But they've got so much scale and importance in what they do.

I've been fortunate enough to be involved, I think now with four museum retrospectives of my career and yeah, it's great for your ego, because you know, a commercial gallery you're trying to sell, right?

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You're there, you want to sell art within the museum, you want to sell an experience, you want your work to have an emotional connection with the people that go in there.

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And God, I've been so lucky. With the museums. And I sit in the corner sometimes when I have museum shows and just look at the kids looking at their work and stuff. I love it, you know, when they're freaked out by it.

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KM: WOW, I'M SURE THAT’S SUCH A COOL FEELING.

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NV: And the commercial side of the art galleries, you know, there's good, bad or indifferent, there's some sharks. Be careful, there's some sharks out there, but there are some great galleries as well. One in London that I'm working with at the moment. So professional, really believe in me. They were the first artist I ever signed ten years ago and now I'm probably their worst artist.

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KM: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THAT AGENCY WORLD VERSUS THE COMMERCIAL ART SPACE?

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NV: The commercial fine art space, when I want a return on the real estate, by real estate, I mean their walls in their galleries. I understand that they've got overheads to pay and they're a commercial organization and stuff. So they're quite ruthless. When you work with a museum, which is an institution whose audience is the public in general, they want to put on shows that get noted and people remember and as an old guy, the experiences that you have in life, they're the things that matter.

They're the things you remember. You know, it's not just making a great sale or doing a great deal and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, it's a good feeling for 24 hours and having some cash is good. Yeah, but those memories that come about when it's not just about money, they're the really important things.

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KM: WHAT'S AN EXPERIENCE YOU HAVE A VERY FOND MEMORY OF?

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NV: A guy came to deliver some hi-fi equipment and a guy came to deliver some speakers and he didn't know where he was going. And he walked in and went, wow, what's all this? So I showed him around and stuff, and like you said, I was like, I love it.

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It's amazing. I've never seen anything like it. And I got an x-ray with him while he was there. That he took away a little, little speaker and stuff like that, and he keeps sending me pictures.

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He takes these x-ray film around with him when he's doing his deliveries and he puts it in the window of all these buildings that he's delivering.

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So it's all random fucking pictures he sends me of my x ray and all these different places. And that's a little thing, you know, like it obviously means a lot to him. He keeps it with him in his truck and he drives around.

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