Went Out for Cigarettes
“I can understand why Southerners are haunted by their own landscape and in love with it.”
The series’ title may be the old cliché of someone walking out the door one day on a random notion and never returning, but it also poses the question of what one might find on such a journey. I went in search of the South I know — not only as a region but also as a concept. Went out for Cigarettes encompasses four states, but regardless of the geography, these images share a familiar physical and psychological landscape.
Southerners are constantly witnessing things dying away. Right before something breathes its last, be it landscape, structure, or conviction, we try to revive it, forever trying to grab hold of a fleeting moment.
This region takes pride in its definition unlike any other place in the country. Southerners are curators without white gloves. The region is eternally trying to save face. The South doesn’t go out to fetch the mail without putting on makeup. We repress certain elements of our past: our politics, our religion, our sexuality. While at the same time, we praise all these things. This region is a didactic contradiction.

And Never Came Back

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Twin Pines

We Destroyed All Our Porches

Evolution

Salvation on Third

Continental Biscuits

Let a Little Sky In

Cat House

Every Other Day is Fine

Shipping Out

I Ain’t Never Seen a Bull Fly

We’ll Leave the Light On

Mind’s in the Gutter

Yard of Blonde Girls

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

For God and Country

Imminent Domain

Secret’s in the Sauce

Bring Out Your Dead

Old Glory

There’s a Red House Over Yonder

Riding Off into the Sunset

Dixie Rothko

God Will Make a Way

Damn the Headlights

Norman

Oh, How They’ll Miss Me

Rhythm & Blues

Guantanamo Bayou

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

An Occurrence at Wendy Mountain

Out of Season

Take the Skyway

Alex, Andy, Chris, and Jody

Sentry in the Woods

Baptist Liquor Store

At the Corner of Main

Purple Haze

St. Francis Water Liars

I-55 Christmas

Rustic Room

Swimming Pools and Movie Stars

Manifest Destiny

Everywhere a Sign

Man of Means by No Means

We Couldn’t Find a Pole

Saturday Night Special

Thank God the Good Times Are Over

Abandon Ship

Wrong Side of the Tracks

Tell Him What You Want

Hole in the Wall

Tangled Up in Blue

I Sold My Soul in Perry County, Gateway to Fun

The Water’s Fine

The Last Lot Lizard

Tommie’s

If You Say So

A Long Lifeline

Valley of Dry Bones

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown
