Cinematic photos get Postal going

Photo by Michael Donahue/The Commercial Appeal, Michael Donahue/The Commercial Appeal

"It's from a movie in my head," says Jonathan Postal of his photographs. "It's from a movie in your head."

Viewers at Jonathan Postal's photo exhibit at Automatic Slim's might wonder what movies those scenes are from: One shows a woman leading a bleeding young man from a burning car; another a woman holding a .45-caliber pistol, and one is of a bound woman in a car trunk.

"(They're) not scenes from actual movies," Postal said. "They're staged."

Photo by Michael Donahue/The Commercial Appeal

"It's from a movie in my head," says Jonathan Postal of his photographs. "It's from a movie in your head."

And, he added, "It's from a movie in my head. It's from a movie in your head."

Postal has wanted to be a filmmaker since he was a teenager growing up in New York, but he couldn't afford to finance the high-quality movies he wanted to make.

And, he said, "I had really bad ADD and I still do. I'm hyper now, but at that point I was virtually vibrating all the time. It was beyond me to organize the amount of people it took to make movies."

He turned to still photography. He began taking urban landscape photos, but he also began creating his cinematic photos.

"I thought, 'Well, I can make scenes from movies that you kind of build the movie around.'"

Describing the photo of the bleeding man, Postal said, "The train was there and that truck is my truck, and we set off smoke bombs under it."

The photos in Postal's show wouldn't be considered strictly "photographs."

When more people began taking photos with digital cameras, Postal began rethinking photography. He began printing his photos on canvas and heavily painting and glazing them. "I didn't want it to be a total painting."

He compares these photos to paintings.

"Each one of those things, if you get it and have it, it's like an object. You own an object that cannot be just printed out. You can't make as many of them as you want. You can only have one."

Postal's show includes images of singer Joan Jett, but others are intriguing looks at subcultures. One shows tattooed men and a woman standing around a vintage car.

"That's Car Club. That was taken in San Francisco. I was always really attracted to subcultures."

The Car Club were "guys that were into rockabilly music. And everything they owned, like the car they're leaning against, is probably a car from 1948."

Postal traveled in and out of subcultures, including the punk scene. He was in several bands, including the Readymades and The Avengers. "They embraced these little universes that they lived in.

"I shot some of the Roller Derby girls here recently, but they take it off and they go home. It's like a costume they put on and they're 'Roller Derby Girls.' And they go back and they're teachers and stuff. But when you were a punk, you knock on someone's door at 5 in the morning, they answer the door, they're still a punk."

Postal lived in London, Milan, San Francisco and New Orleans before he moved to Memphis in the late '90s. He's married to fellow artist Mary Long- Postal.

He's here thanks to Automatic Slim's and former owner Karen Blockman Carrier.

"It's a hot afternoon and I come in here and my dog is outside. Karen says, 'Why don't you bring your dog in and I'll give it some water?' I said, 'You would let my dog in your bar?' And she goes, 'Yeah.' I thought, 'I like this city.' "

-- Michael Donahue: 529-2797

Stills

The exhibit is on view through Feb. 28 at Automatic Slim's at 83 S. Second.

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