The B-Sides

What doesn't make the edit.

Once I come back from a day or two of making Polaroids, I might start to edit immediately. Most often I’ve already flipped through the photos and know what worked and what didn’t. Sometimes the little rectangles stay in their box, in rough chronological order, until I start to sift weeks or even months later.

Greenwich Village, NYC, 2019. Maybe this is too blown-out? Is it just that it seemed wild to have a statue in a lobby but maybe that’s not as interesting when you’re not standing in the lobby? Also Eleanor Roosevelt lived here.

I sort, fast, into two piles. A-sides and interesting B-sides and then the rejects. The “A” is exactly what you think it is—a song you hope could get played on the radio. Maybe it’s not a hit in the usual way, but it at least has the potential to be a hit. I scan them and then post them on Instagram or here or submit them to shows or publications. They’re the ones I text my friends, y’all, LOOK AT THIS.

Jackson, Mississippi, 2020. I love this—the textures and colors—but it’s very quiet.

The second pile is complete rejects. They get boxed back up, they’re not scanned, and they go in a giant plastic box, never to be looked at again (at least, I haven’t looked at the reject graveyard in years. And it is massive). There’s lots of reasons to reject a frame—might be the image was too faint, or too dark, or just a lousy angle. Worse is when it’s just boring.

House in Savage, Mississippi, 2019. This is a brutally boring photo but an interesting place. Update during reread before posting: this photo also sucks and has nothing to say. I took it genuinely just because I was in a place called Savage. Should I delete it now?? Should I just delete this whole passage? IT KEEPS GETTING WORSE WHEN I LOOK AT IT

The heartbreak comes from when it’s the only shot you take that day of something interesting, but it’s . . . off. Just weird, or stilted, or boring, or not as cool as the shot immediately after. If there’s some magnetic attraction, I still scan these misfits, but rarely know what to do with them.

Birmingham, Alabama, 2019. Terrible exposure and framing but omg, VARIETY CASKETS

The B-side to “Let It Be” by the Beatles is a jam called “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number).” It starts with this incredible groove and a fun sing-a-long by the boys, and then about fifty seconds in . . . degrades to vaudeville nonsense. It gets cringey, like songs-you-skip-on-The White Album-ugh-cringey, quick.

Still, there’s something compelling in that first minute. There’s just something compelling in the whole shebang.

Foul Ball, Yankees Stadium, NYC, 2019. I kind of like this but have no idea what to do with it. Isn’t it funny how posed everyone looks? “Hey everybody I want to take a photo, some of y’all stand up and the rest of you sit rock still.”

This is a long way of saying “here’s a bunch of Polaroids I don’t know what do with, but something about them is interesting to me, even if just for a moment.” (Sometimes that’s just the location the photo was taken, or them in dialogue with another photo).

Clarksdale, Mississippi, 2019. This is at Red’s. Actually I might like it but the exposure is both too dark and too light.

Jackson, Mississippi, 2018. On Highway 49; just have never gotten the light right (it’s under a roof overhang and is like grey on pink, which I can’t get on film).

Zebulon, Georgia, 2019. “This encapsulates the complexity of modern life—” (slapping noise)

More concisely, HERE IS SOME WEIRD TRASH, LET ME KNOW WHAT U THINK.

Copiah County, Mississippi, 2019. The exposure is kind of blown out and you can’t see that it says “DEER PROCESSING” and that there is a BULLET coming towards the deer’s head!!

Isaac Hayes’ Cadillac (in motion), Memphis, Tennessee, 2019. It’s not my white whale but this thing keeps taunting me. Is there someone at the Stax Museum who can turn the carousel off for like three minutes so I can take a picture of the grille?? [Crying emoji face]

All those BMX trophies I found on the side of the road in a box with a student Bible, 2019. I don’t do a ton of still lifes but this was actually really fun. Bonus bizarro fact: I staged this in Greenwood Cemetery. Maybe I really like this? But what does it “mean”??

THANK-YOU for diving into the past 2 years of my archive with me, as I seek to find interesting fragments from my work over the years. And it’s fun to interrogate why something doesn’t quite work, too. I remain gorjusjxn on Instagram (still on a break but lots of Polaroids there) and you can see more of my (not terrible) photography at McCartyPolaroids.