I’m running across Green Springs Highway and my pants are falling down. “Tell us about your artistic process,” the imaginary class says in my head, and as I clear the fifth lane of traffic with a thumb snagged in my waistband I declare, to myself and the imaginary class and the 2017 Escalade barrelling at me between forty and seventy miles an hour, I declare, with a steely gaze, “always wear a belt.”
Green Springs Hwy, Birmingham, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (all photos 2022). We passed this nearly every Sunday on the way home from church once we began going to a Full Gospel congregation.
I wasn’t wearing my belt because I was sick of it since I’ve got some “winter padding” right now and I was riding around Birmingham and the buckle was digging into my padding zone. “You mean stomach,” one of the imaginary students says. “You got old and you got fat,” another one mumbles, a student who has a haircut like Robert Pattinson in the new Batman trailer, and who has never even been to New York before, let alone on a subway, like me, an artist in their prime.
The former Sandusky First Baptist, Alabama, SX-70. The church my Nana went to all of her life, where my parents were married, where I went to Sunday School and Vacation Bible School.
“Sometimes an artist must be brave,” I smile, expansively, with nearly all of my teeth, and nearly all of those original to the model and not just thousand dollar crowns from a strip mall in Flowood. “And that’s why, upon spying the legendary Red Mountain sign from my childhood—on the route we took home to Sandusky from the church we attended in Homewood—I pulled over my trusty Civic and sprinted across the busy road.”
“Yeah, but did you get the shot,” an imaginary student on the imaginary front row asks. They have a pierced septum, and green eyes. Like me, a sophisticate, they’ve probably been to New York—maybe even more than once. “Like, your pants almost fell down in the middle of Green Springs Highway, and you almost killed yourself, pantsless, but you made great art, right?”
Birmingham, Alabama, SX-70, down the hill from where my great-grandfather (my mother’s grandfather), lived until he passed. Born 1898, he was always kind to me; his grave is in the same cemetery as my great hero Bear Bryant.
“That’s it, up there on the screen,” I say proudly, and point to the black & white image of the sign: THIS RED MOUNTAIN IRON ORE IS BASIS— “wait, that’s it?” says my fellow sophisticate. “I thought that was just like, a placeholder, not the actual photograph.” “From Wikipedia!” someone helpfully chimes in from the back of the room. “You can’t even read what the other sign says at the top.”
A little house in Avondale, SX-70, rented because it was a little less than a mile away from the Saturn, where I saw a luminous performance by Madi Diaz and the great artist Waxahatchee.
The merest glimmer of perspiration appears upon my brow. “Well, it was really sunny, and the angle was—between the sun and the angle it kind of blew out the rest of the image, but you can almost see what it says.” A kind of low mumbling, started probably by the Batman person, starts in the room. “It says ‘TOP OF SEAM,’ that’s what it says!” I chime in helpfully.
“But why is tilted like that, like a Dutch angle in The Third Man,” asks a film student, who has, let’s say, black hair cut short in a sort of German Expressionist type thing. “Well, there’s not much room on the side of the road—like none, really—it was basically this angle, or nothing,” I explain.
Hueytown, Alabama, SX-70, across the street from the auto shop where I had my ‘69 Camaro painted blue ca. 1994.
This reality, this fact, doesn’t please the class, as shown by more murmuring. “It’s honestly the best I could do, given the light, time of day, and the traffic—” “This barely make sense,” says another student, who doesn’t really need to be described, who is also in the class. “Are you, like, planning to speak at an art class anytime soon? I mean, are we an art class? Or are we like, a government class at Millsaps and you’re just having a psychotic break, you just decided to talk about Polaroids instead of the three branches of government?”
The exposed rusty side of Red Mountain, Polaroid 600. This is the view upon arriving once one has sprinted across Green Springs Highway to make a photo of a sign.
Heads throughout the class begin to nod, and someone says “right on,” which is a thing people say, a lot, especially young people. “Or are you—hear me out now—are you just trying to justify the art you are trying to make about your childhood, even though it is mediocre,” says the film student, who I realize now is wearing a wig, the same kind (spoiler alert!) worn by Solveig Dommartin at the beginning act of Until the End of the World, which I would like to remind everybody came from a story she co-wrote, not just starred in.
Arkadelphia Road, more or less, Polaroid 600, bent accidentally due to a gust of wind at sunset, causing the damge at bottom right.
“We’re not talking about the overlooked genius of Solveig Dommartin, who we all agree deserves more credit for that film, as well as her luminous, hopeful portrayal in Wings of Desire!” cries the film student. “This is about whether you made a bad photograph, but are tring to justify it through the lens of sentimentality and personal experience!”
I know I’ve lost them now, as there are nods and general murmurs of assent; one student, who is wearing a beret and a black-and-white striped blouse, snaps her fingers. The New York sophisticate, who lived in Bedford–Stuyvesant her whole life but came South to seek real authenticity, furrows her brow. “Wait, we’re not even real? And now I’m not just coded as cool, I’m actually from New York? And why Bed-Stuy, that’s oddly specific.” Batman can’t keep it together: “Are we . . . are any of us—I mean, if I’ve got Robert Pattinson’s haircut from the trailer, am I—” his breath hitches. “Am I hot, or do you mean I’m dumb? You mean I’m dumb, don’t you.” He sobs. The student in the beret eases her tiny rectangular sunglasses down onto the bridge of her nose; her eyes narrow.
Homage to Lee Friedlander, tired after driving all day with my antenna up, looking and remembering, Polaroid SX-70.
Camera bag jostling, pants still taking a dive, I’ve run back over Green Springs. Across from the sign is an auto parts store, and in the lot facing the highway people have parked their home-detailed cars and trucks, with hand lettered signs in the front window. $3K FIRM, or $6,500 OBO. There is a man peering into the window of a little Honda, attempting to decode the condition of the car from the wet look of its Armor All’d dash, the faux leather wrapped around the chunky steering wheel. He doesn’t notice me, out of breath and hitching up my pants, clutching at a tin of photographs.
Maybe there’s something special in there, I think, patting the light-tight metal case as the Polaroids soften into an image. Maybe a photo that will really mean something, not just to me, but other people too. That they’ll be able to feel.
Maybe.
“TOP OF SEAM” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
Something quite vintage about the writing this week. Something a bit mid 20th century.