Memphis and the Mid-South
Prints of photographs in this gallery are available on request. Email f8inmemphis at gmail.com for prices.
 The vision shall come to pass: Inside an abandoned white-frame church in Nitta Yuma, Mississippi, visitors see this message on a banner hanging over the main entrance. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Just after sunset, looking west along Poplar Avenue: Can you find the whirling-satellite neon at Joe's Liquor Store? (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  A burst of spring, 2016 ... on North Parkway in Midtown Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
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 When day turns to Starry Nights ... at Shelby Farms Park in East Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Geese fly toward the setting sun at Shelby Farms Park in East Memphis ... and yes, those are real geese, not app-created birds. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Even if just for a few moments, in Midtown Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 These trees on Chickasaw Lake at Shelby Farms Park were lit by a setting sun, enhancing their reddish-brown tones even more. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Another great end to a day at Shelby Farms Park, near Walnut Grove Road and Interstate 240 in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Everyone loves a good sunset ... at Shelby Farms Park in East Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 A mid-September day fades toward nightfall in East Memphis. White Station Tower is in the foreground; the photograph was made from nearby Clark Tower. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Thousands of Elvis Presley fans lit their candles the night of Aug. 15, 2015, for the annual vigil at Presley's Graceland estate in Memphis. Presley died on Aug. 16, 1977. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  At Sun Studio near downtown Memphis, it was the calm before the storm of fans as Elvis Week 2015 was set to begin. Each year thousands of Elvis Presley fans visit the city to commemorate the anniversary of the entertainer's death on Aug. 16, 1977. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 A procession down Beale Street paused in front of the club that bears B.B. King's name on May 27, 2015. Carrying one of King's guitars was Rodd Bland, who played drums for King and is the son of the late blues artist Bobby 'Blue' Bland. At right is Herman Green, 85, a sax player for King in the early years. A hearse bearing King's remains followed the procession, then turned south toward U.S. Highway 61 and Indianola, Mississippi, where a funeral was held. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  A purple ribbon was placed on the statue at B.B. King Park in the entertainer's hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, where a church funeral was held for him on May 30, 2015. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Mount Holly, an antebellum mansion in the Mississippi Delta, was destroyed by a fire that struck in the early morning hours of June 17, 2015. Only the brick walls were left at the 159-year-old, 30-room plantation house overlooking Lake Washington, south of Greenville. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 It drove up out of the darkness, like a cool dream on a hot summer night ... on Riverside Drive in downtown Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The grassy roof of Beale Street Landing in downtown Memphis is a great vantage point for viewing the Mississippi River at the city's front door. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  A towboat tends a barge just after sunset on the Mississippi River near downtown Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 A field at Agricenter International in East Memphis is planted each year in sunflowers. When the flowers bloom it becomes a favorite place for families -- and a few photographers -- to make some pictures. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Folks were enjoying all things green on 4/20 -- April 20, 2015 -- in Overton Park in Midtown Memphis, lush after spring rains. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Let's take a trolley ride down by the river and forget the troubles of the day ... (on the Mississippi riverfront in downtown Memphis, Tennessee). (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Fans gather on Aug. 15, 2014, for the annual candlelight vigil at Graceland, as Elvis Week neared an end in Memphis, Tennessee. Events each year mark the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death in 1977. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Nothing but the blues ... in Clarksdale, Mississippi. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  A freight train rests under a painted sky near Cooper Street and Central Avenue in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Some call them the three brothers -- the old bridges that cross the Mississippi River south of downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The Frisco Bridge is at center; the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge is on the left and the Harahan Bridge is at right. The Frisco and Harahan are railroad bridges; the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge carries Interstate 55. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The Harahan Bridge is one of four spans that cross the Mississippi River at Memphis, Tennessee. The Harahan opened in 1916 as the second bridge at Memphis and carries two rail lines across the river. It was built with roadways for vehicles cantilevered off the sides of the main structure. The roadways featured wood-plank roadbeds, but today the wood is gone. The roadways were used from 1917 to 1949, when the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge opened 400 feet to the south. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The Frisco Bridge is at left, just south of the Harahan Bridge; both carry railroad tracks across the Mississippi River south of downtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 The day's afterglow ... under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge across the Mississippi River at Memphis, Tennessee. The decision to light the bridge some 20 years ago was popular with almost everyone but towboat pilots, who can now turn off the bridge lights by aiming their boats' searchlights at a light-sensitive switch. The pilots prefer the darkness when guiding barges between the span's piers. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Sailing the Delta, on a sea of cotton ... near Clayton, Mississippi, south of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Johnny Cash slept here: The children slept in the front bedroom of this house in Dyess, Arkansas, where Johnny Cash spent his childhood years. (The singer is said to have slept in the bed on the right.) These aren't the original beds, but replacements that were found to match the family's furnishings. The frame house, built by the federal government in 1935, has been restored by Arkansas State University. It opened to public tours for the first time in August 2014. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Alabama ghost town, ghost nuke plant: A chimney is all that remains of what was once an inn at Bellefonte, near the Tennessee Valley Authority's unfinished Bellefonte nuclear plant in northeast Alabama. The town of Bellefonte was heavily damaged in the Civil War and later abandoned, leaving only the inn's chimney and a cemetery. Billions of dollars have been spent on the TVA plant since construction began in 1974, but the site has sat idle for some 20 years. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  About 30 miles west of Memphis, just outside Earle, Arkansas on Highway 149, a 13-foot-tall white marble statue looks down from atop a 10-foot Indian mound on the edge of a lonely cotton field. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places and marks the grave of George Berry Washington, a former slave who died in 1928 as one of the biggest landowners in the surrounding county. His survivors put up this statue, said to be of Italian marble. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Country roads near Reliance, Tennessee, east of Chattanooga. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Tootsies Orchid Lounge is a storied honky tonk on Nashville's Broadway near Ryman Auditorium. Its early customers included Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Earnestine & Hazel's, on South Main in downtown Memphis, is regularly included on national lists of the best dive bars in the United States. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  An upstairs room at Earnestine & Hazel's, a legendary dive bar on South Main in downtown Memphis. Legend has it that the building once housed a brothel. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee: The home of the blues, the birthplace of rock and roll. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The town of Rodney, Mississippi, near Port Gibson, was once a thriving river port. It missed becoming the state capital by only three votes. A few people still live there today, but most of the town itself is abandoned. Originally settled by the French in 1763, the town suffered two serious fires and was left isolated when the Mississippi River changed course. The center building is the abandoned Rodney Baptist Church, which dates to about 1870. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Inside the abandoned Rodney (Mississippi) Baptist Church. The church dates to about 1870. Rodney is about 280 miles south of Memphis, near Port Gibson, Mississippi. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Rodney Presbyterian Church in the abandoned town of Rodney, Mississippi, was built in 1830-31. During the Civil War it was shelled by the Union gunboat "Rattler," stationed on the nearby Mississippi River, after some Union sailors from the boat attended Sunday services at the church and were captured by Confederate cavalry troops on Sept. 13, 1863. Rodney is about 280 miles south of Memphis, near Port Gibson. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Inside Rodney Presbyterian Church in the abandoned town of Rodney, Mississippi, about 280 miles south of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  A rusty gas pump still stands outside an old store in the largely abandoned town of Rodney, Mississippi. The store operated as the Alston Grocery, which a historical marker indicates opened about 1915. Rodney is about 280 miles south of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 The section of roof over the choir loft collapsed roughly 10 years ago at the old St. Thomas Catholic Church in South Memphis, Tennessee, not long after it had been abandoned by its last tenant, the Church of God in Christ. This view in June 2014 is from the middle of the church looking toward the rear of the area where the congregation gathered for worship, with the choir loft above the main entrance doors. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Light rain and fog can make for an interesting outing along the Mississippi River near downtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The Old Forest Arboretum in Overton Park is a 172-acre natural tract that preserves what much of the Memphis area looked like before the city was developed. The Old Forest is on the National Register of Historic Places and part of it was designated a Tennessee state natural area in 2011. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Sunset over Broad Avenue and its water tower in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  If pink Cadillacs could fly: A bar on Broad Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, mounted half of a pink Cadillac just below the building's roofline as an attention-getter. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The Fourth of July fireworks show in the parking lot next to the Buccaneer Lounge, one of the finer dive bars in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee, is always spectacular. The 2014 display drew a crowd of several hundred folks. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Meanwhile in North Alabama, Wilson Pickett comes to town; to record that sweet soul music, to get that Muscle Shoals sound. -- "Ronnie and Neil," Drive-By Truckers ... (And so did Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and many, many others.) This view shows the U.S. 72 bridge on the Tennessee River between Florence and Sheffield-Muscle Shoals. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Work boats stay on the job late on the Mississippi River south of downtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  The American Queen, docked at Beale Street Landing in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. This riverboat is actually powered by a steam plant turning its stern paddlewheel, but it does have diesel-electric-driven propellers for backup. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 Overgrown silos are rural monoliths on Joyner's Campground Road in Fayette County, Tennessee, east of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  An early-1940s Cadillac rusts in peace in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, northeast of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  New Hope Missionary Baptist Church was established on April 28, 1918, according to its cornerstone. I've shot a lot of old rural churches, but this is my favorite. The church is on Old U.S. Hwy. 61 near Estill, in the Mississippi Delta. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 There's always a piano -- or so it seems sometimes when exploring abandoned places. This Kimball upright is next to the pulpit inside the abandoned Taylor's Chapel Methodist Church in Fayette County, Tennessee, northeast of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  In the days before Walmart, country stores thrived, like this one in Haywood County, Tennessee, east of Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Alley scene in downtown Helena, Arkansas. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 A patch of Tennessee sunflowers brighten the intersection of Mississippi Boulevard and Saxon Avenue in South Memphis. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Street art at Mississippi Boulevard and McLemore Avenue in South Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Cannon at sunset in a park on the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 If it's over, let me know ... (summer, that is). Trees at Chickasaw Lake in Shelby Farms Park at Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Looking west toward the setting sun over the expanding Patriot Lake at Shelby Farms Park in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Summer in the city, 2014: Looking west on Madison Avenue in Midtown Memphis, Tennessee, near sundown, the trolley tracks seem a bit lonesome with the trolley cars all out of service for repairs. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 The 100-year-old Hotel Chisca, an eight-story, 400-room structure, had been abandoned for decades on South Main Street in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. It's now being renovated for apartments, with some commercial space, in a project worth about $20 million. (2014 photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  An abandoned hotel south of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, once beckoned travelers with an "Exit Here" sign. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  A colorful paint job adorns a house in the Cooper-Young neighborhood of Midtown Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 A double rainbow (look closely to see the top one) over Crump Boulevard in South Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  Funny how the circle turns around; first you're up, and then you're down again. -- "Full Circle," The Byrds (Ferris wheel shot at the Delta Fair at Agricenter International in Memphis, Tennessee). (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |  An amusement ride at the annual Delta Fair at the Agricenter International in Memphis, Tennessee, plummets toward the ground at sunset. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |
 My take on the ride almost everyone shooting pictures at a county fair photographs -- and why not? It's a ride with lots of color and action. So I tried a hand-held, slow-shutter thing to show that motion at the Delta Fair in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo copyright Mike Kerr) |