LMàG

ARTICLE 5
A Short History of Le Masque à Gaz

_____"Why do you collect gas masks?" This is usually the first question people ask when they learn of my strange hobby. And to answer this question, I suppose I must start at the beginning.
_____For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with war and all things military. As a child, toy guns and G.I. Joe action figures were among my favorite play things, and I wore camouflage as often as I could. I can't tell you how many times I watched Red Dawn, and I saw Full Metal Jacket for the first time when I was about 12 years old. As I grew up, the reality of war became more apparent, and the knowledge of humanity's impact on our planet more poignant. Along with this knowledge, I gained a generally despondent attitude and an increasing interest in the darker side of life. This combined with my continued interest in military history, steered me toward nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare. I was initially compelled to purchase my first gas mask when I was 19 years old. I found it at a local surplus store for $9; it was a common Israeli civilian mask, new in the box with the proper filter and instruction sheet.

It wasn't too long before I wandered into another surplus shop during my Junior year of college, and found yet another interesting but common gas mask. This time around, it was a French ANP M 51. I spent a mere $11 on it. A few more masks soon followed, as I shopped local Army/Navy stores in the area. Little did I know what I was getting into! During my senior year of college, the pace picked up speed. I discovered the Internet, and this is where I began my first bit of research. Initially, I just wanted to know more about the few masks that I had. Where did they come from? Who used them and when were they made? What was inside these old filters? I quickly found that there was little information online to help answer these questions. So, I turned to the library. And while I found some helpful photographs in history books, good solid information about gas masks eluded me. This lack of information only compelled me to find out more about these obscure objects from the past!

[ABOVE: A photo of me wearing my first gas mask, taken for a photography class self-portrait project by my future wife, Linda.]

Toward the end of my final semester of school, I was given a web site design project for one of my media classes. Immediately knew what my web site was going to be about, and Le Masque à Gaz was born. I decided to call the site "Le Masque à Gaz" because this was the French term for "The Gas Mask", and French was the language I studied in school. Soon I was finished with college and back home living with my parents. I had some web space available through my ISP, and Le Masque à Gaz was published here first. In the beginning, Le Masque à Gaz was a simple, single html sub-page of my main Internet project called "No Future Productions". It featured a few pictures of gas masks that I scanned from books, and it looked like this.

[ABOVE: Another early photo of me with my small collection of only 31 masks, c. February 1998.]

Despite it's simplicity, I started recieving lots of positive e-mails about Le Masque à Gaz. And soon I found out that I wasn't the only one curious about gas masks. In addition to all of the great information that seemed to flood in over-night, I also found a way to locate more masks for my collection. At the time, there was no eBay, but there were a few shops online that sold surplus and military antiques. So, via the Internet, my collection began to take shape. As time passed, I learned more and more about web site design, and my collection continued to grow. Before long, I was swapping masks and information with new friends I made online, and the path to where I am today was paved. Around this same time, I began photographing all of the masks in my collection, and before long a new version of LMàG was ready and published (see below). By this time, my interest went beyond inanely thinking that gas masks were simply "cool" looking objects to have around. Although I still think they are, it was the history and techno-culture surrounding NBC protective masks that I became seriously interested in. After the second version of LMàG went online, my list of friends from around the world grew, and I found that I was not the only one collecting. All of this new information fueled my interest and desire to collect even more, and in the years to follow, I vigorously spent much money, and lots of time collecting. From this point forward, my "hobby" only got more and more serious. Soon I discovered an interesting web site called eBay, and I found that I could win all types of masks relatively cheaply. So, I continued to buy as many masks as I could afford, and the size of my collection rapidly grew.

[ABOVE: The second version of Le Masque à Gaz that remained online for several months, c. 2000.]
After the second version of my web site was online for several months, I decided that Le Masque à Gaz deserved its own domain name. So in 2001 I registered gasmasks.net, and moved LMàG to what would be its permanent home in cyberspace. At this same time, I revamped the look and feel of the site entirely, changing the background color from black to white. This switch was made primarily to accommodate my new photographs, taken with a 2.1 megapixel Sony Cybershot digital camera against a pure white background. This gave LMàG a "cleaner" look and cut down on much of the digital editing I had to do when I was using a black background. Despite the new and improved look, I was still fairly dissatisfied with Le Masque à Gaz as a whole, and as a result, the web site seemed to be perpetually incomplete for several years. I tried several different layouts, including one entirely contained in a "floating" window (click here), and several other similar designs that simply didn't work well enough. During this time I continually learned new web design techniques and perfected my photography skills. I also made many new friends online, and continued collecting as much as I could afford. But somehow, years passed and LMàG was still incomplete. This was primarily because I was moving around quite a bit, and I wanted to re-photograph all of my masks (again). Also slowing me down was the sheer burden of my collection. Finding a safe place to store over 500 gas masks is a serious task, and to have a quick way to frequently gain access to them all was logistically difficult as well. But, during the summer of 2004, I was determined to get all of the photographs taken. Needless to say, this took several months. But once I was done, the hard part was over (so I thought). The next step was to get all of my photos and research compiled so that I could write and finish THE GAS MASK DATABASE. So, I worked diligently for many months, and in late 2005 I was finally done. For the first time in the history of the site, I was satisfied with the layout, structure and functionality of Le Masque à Gaz.	[ABOVE: A photo of me with my growing collection, c. late 1998.]
[ABOVE: A photo of me with a portion of my expanded collection on display, circa 2000.]

[ABOVE: Just the corner of my storage room, circa 2004.]

[ABOVE: Another early photo of me in my first gas mask, taken by Linda, c. 1997.]

Since the beginning, I have made a lot of nice friends and contacts. Included in the list below are just some of them, amongst the many others who have helped and supported me and my strange hobby since the beginning. I am sure I may have left some people out, so feel free to e-mail me if you feel you should be on this list!

[ABOVE: Another photo taken by Linda for an outdoor photo-shoot, c. 2001.]

Special thanks to Linda, for putting up with me for all these years...