Grasshopper Community Church - Scenes from the South

Grasshopper Community Church - Birchwood, TN - Southern Gothic Photography by Ricky Davis of TRD Photography

This photograph is special to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, this church doesn’t exist anymore. Several years ago we had a bad flood and the creek that runs behind this church in the woods overflowed and it was so strong that this church was knocked off it’s foundation and was torn down.

The second reason this photo is special to me is I grew up just down the road from this church. I never attended it, but many a Sunday evenings did I spend out in the pastures throwing baseballs into the air to hit them to the sound of gospel singings taking place at this church. In the moment, things like that don’t mean a whole lot, but looking back on it as you get older you start to look at the culture around you and see it disappearing.

I took this photograph many years ago on 35mm Kodak TMax film. I needed to do a test job because I’d had some issues with developing chemicals and I wanted to test it out. I wasn’t doing much shooting outside of people so I went out and took some photographs around and I photographed this church. I was glad that I did because soon after was the flood. Sometimes you have to take advantage of the time you have.