Alabama's US 11

A Photographer's Newsletter

The great French novelist Stendahl once said that “a novel is a mirror carried along a road.”

Being a photographer rather than a novelist, I carried a camera, not a mirror, along Alabama’s oldest and most famous road: Highway 11. This journey started in 1977, when I moved to Alabama from Europe.

US 11 was completed with a grant from Alabama State Council on the Arts. It will have another showing sometime in the coming spring, as the Frederick Gunn School I attended in 1954-5 is having a retrospective of my work. I always felt that this series of photographs was a worthy cause. One of my best, in fact. It has gathered a lot of positive reviews. Maybe it will be a book someday.

At first I made pictures along US 11 merely to visually survey my new surroundings; then, later, to enjoy weekend treks in the country; and finally because my undefined project showed promise of becoming a “novel”—or, more accurately, a visual statement that somehow defined itself with this phrase: “We all live on the same street.”

Of course, this phrase is not to be interpreted literally. What I mean is that sooner or later the woman waiting by Jack’s will catch the bus and perhaps pass the young man shooting baskets near Springville, or the Shriners marching along, or travel past the tracks, and the cows by the pond, the cotton fields, and the sawmill, and so on. All

Downtown Birmingham

Springville

"Big Jim" Folsom, who built US11, in 1927

1st Avenue N.

Near Cenral Birmingham

Alas, because these images were made almost fifty years ago, a lot of what I saw is no longer there. Like "Big Jim"himself. Also, the last original McDonald’s in America was razed so a parking lot could take its place. The beautiful Fox Building sadly is no more, and the paint has probably washed off the Schlitz Beer can silos near Fosters. I am very sorry to say that “Utopia” is no longer recognizable. I wonder if it still exists. (It was on the Mississippi side of the border anyway.) More likely the little boy watching his team at Rickwood Field is taking his own little boy to watch the Barons play over at the new field, now in downtown Birmingham.

Rickwood Field

The late Fox Building. Would have been the best lofts ever.

The Schlitz Cans, near Fosters

Utopia (In case you wondered what it looked like).

So, in some important ways, the camera is like a mirror, in that it shows the viewer a reflection of the quality of life that surrounds us. Fortunately, the camera can maintain and confirm these reflections forever…and we can see the way we were.

NOTE: The US 11 series is 45 prints. As I couldn't fit in all the images that are mentioned here, perhaps a subsequent substack will show some more. The silver gelatin prints are intact from their 1978 virgin print run, with help from friend Robert Webb. When shown complete, it looks like this: