Photo Essay: Memphis’ South Main and Warehouse Districts
- by Robert McGowan, Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
Robert McGowan, who contributed his short story “Kat” in issue two, returns now with a selection of photographs made in 1986 in downtown Memphis’ South Main and Warehouse Districts. McGowan was an early pioneer (1982-1992) on South Main, where in the mid-1980s he founded the Memphis Center for Contemporary Art and the journal NUMBER: and was instrumental in the development of South Main Street as an arts/historic district. McGowan was himself for many years a practicing artist; his work resides in numerous collections including the American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution. In the mid-1990s, he was art critic for The Memphis Flyer. The photographs presented here are selected from the full series held as a component of The McGowan Collection at Memphis Public Library. They represent the artist’s personal response to the bleakness of South Main Street and environs prior to revitalization. The photographs are gelatin-silver prints, c. 3 3/4″x6″. Robert McGowan lives now in midtown Memphis. He writes novels and short stories, most of them set in the art world. Stories will appear this fall in the literary journals Blue Mesa Review, South Dakota Review, and Vulcan.