I grew up in Alabama, but it wasn’t William Christenberry who brought me into the world of photography. For decades I didn’t understand him at all—couldn’t decode the large blocks of colorful barns, the gently degrading country stores, the red dirt of Hale County. It was all so quiet. As Vic Chesnutt would say, it was “little.”
Shreveport Psychic, Louisiana, January 2020 (SX-70).
No, it was the mournful, broken glamour of William Eggleston that got me—before I knew his name, I knew the art from album covers, from Big Star and Primal Scream. It was Birney Imes’ mysterious, kaleidoscopic juke joints. It was Sally Mann’s starkly bizarre, supernaturally honest work about her family. (And no, I wasn’t in that select gang of folks who met her in Starkville when she visited in the 90s—but I did learn about her as a result of the visit).
The Gospel Barn, Pike County, Georgia, July 2017 (Polaroid 600)
Then over time things begin to change. In 2017, as one of the two Slow Exposures artists in residence, I found myself—God forbid—taking pictures of barns and trees and on at least one occasion standing in a field of rich red dirt staring to the horizon. That was on the top of listening to literal hours of the Allman Brothers on the way to Zebulon from Mississippi—music I’d spent my entire adult life decrying as bloated jam rock—eventually making a pilgirmage to the Big House in Macon during my residency.
The grave of Gregg Allman, Macon, Ga, July 2017 (SX-70)
It wasn’t like I’d never heard the Allmans or Blackfoot or Wet Willie before; their songs were soaked into my childhood and teenage years. As I trod deeper into my 40s, those sounds became more precious to me.
And just as that music begun to slowly unlock, so did the art of Mr. Christberry. What seemed to me before to be boring became sublime; what seemed simple stood revealed as vibrant as a fractal.
I only truly understood this when kneeling in the high grass of Hale County, sweat rolling into my eyes, on a Due South Co-op pilgrimage helmed by Ryan Steed.
Beat 13, Hale County, Alabama, July 2019 (SX-70)
Alright, I hear you, I said to all the ghosts. I just hadn’t been wanting to listen.
THERE IS A NEW ALBUM out by Napalm Death and it is magnificently bleak . . . I snagged the Replacements’ Inconcerated 3LP set and the Alternate Rumours by Stevie and the Gang at Offbeat’s Record Store Day and am still hyper . . . the dam finally burst and there was SEC football all day long and Bama trounced Mizzou, with Dylan Moses looking stellar on defense . . . I’m slowly reading and re-reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved and overcome by its sumptuous language and lurking horror . . . I rewatched O Brother, Where Art Thou for the first time in years and like to have collapsed from laughing.
AS ALWAYS I am gorjusjxn on Instagram and you can see more of my photogrpahy at McCartyPolaroids.