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Spartan News
The Ghosts of Pay Phones Past
Miami Country Day faculty participate in a wide array of projects based on their individual passions. It is especially important to recognize our teachers for their notable work, relative to this day and age, such as Scott Brennan’s photo essay on dead pay phones. The series, which features photos of dead pay phones in urban Miami areas, will be published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology. Brennan is an Upper School humanities teacher with a knack for photography. He applied this skill to recognizing and capturing parallels between pay phones and more widespread issues in modern times, which he explains in the following Q & A.
Where did the idea come from?
It’s difficult to know exactly where the idea to photograph the series of dead pay phones came from. Part of my process includes taking long walks with my camera and photographing whatever seems interesting in the moment. The photographer William Eggleston, one of my heroes, published a book of prints called The Democratic Forest. In the introductory essay, he put forth the idea that all things are worthy of being photographed, and consequently nothing is more important than anything else in terms of subject matter. I took Eggleston’s idea to heart several years ago—perhaps why I was able to notice the pay phones in the first place. Though many people might find them ugly or signifiers of urban blight (who can blame them?), I found their aesthetic qualities, if viewed objectively and democratically, interesting. I suppose this goes along with the Japanese concept of wabi sabi—that the mark time leaves upon an object has the potential to render the object aesthetically beautiful, or at least worthy of contemplation.
This is not to say I find dead pay phones beautiful in the way one might find a sculpture by Michelangelo or a painting by Vermeer beautiful. Far from it. Rather, artistically and politically I am interested in irony, in capturing tensions. I like the tensions created between a cast-off object like a dead pay phone, which in one context is an eye sore, and that of a well composed photograph, which in an alternate context can be considered an aesthetically interesting piece of art. I perhaps like the irreconcilability of that tension.
As I began to photograph more and more dead pay phones, often in edgy parts of Miami, I began to reflect on them and wonder why I was drawn to them as subject matter. I was also curious as to why I was willing to explore parts of the city I would usually consider off limits. I began to see the dead pay phones as a metaphor for broken lines of communication, lost opportunities, outmoded forms of technology, poverty, and desperation. They seemed indicative of a caste system in America, as they could only be found in poor, neglected neighborhoods. They revealed signs of the human presence, too, in interesting ways. They were often covered with graffiti. Usually, they were stripped of metal the homeless or addicts sold as scrap. The coin boxes were almost always broken into and plundered. Once I understood the metaphor, I knew I’d be able to create the photo essay, to write about what I think the pay phones represent and what they say about Miami specifically and America in general.
What was your research process?
At first, I began to photograph dead pay phones as I came across them by chance on my walks through the city. After capturing four or five of them, I thought I might build upon the series, and so I began to actively seek them out by bicycling around Overtown, El Portal, Little River, Liberty City, parts of North Miami, Wynwood, and Opa-locka. Often, I’d drive around in my Jeep looking for them, too. I was particularly interested in capturing the pay phones at night, illuminated by artificial light. Because my exploration involved some risk, I would often photograph them very late at night—sometimes at 4:00 am—when things would be (I thought) a bit safer. I researched locations of pay phones—which is possible to do on the Internet—but mostly I drove or bicycled around looking for them. As far as the essay goes—that is, the written component—I researched the origin of pay phones, statistics regarding their use, the evolution of the cell phone, and so on. I combined the research with my own reflections upon the subject.
What do you plan on doing after publication?
After the photo essay appears in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology, I plan on making a DIY photo book of the series. I’ll print the best pieces in large format, and I’ll display a few at The Bakehouse Art Complex, where I am a resident artist. I hope to sell a few of the prints to collectors, perhaps exhibit the series, and then I suppose the prints will go into my personal archives.
Is the issue or topic used in any of your classroom settings?
I think the themes I explore in the series examine broken lines of communication, disconnection, obsolete technology, socio-economic barriers, and racial and cultural caste systems in America. These themes inform all my classes in one way or another—but most explicitly in AP English Literature and Composition and my new Photo Essay/Digital Story elective class. In the AP class, we examine these themes in works by Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, poems by Natasha Treheway, Langston Hughes, and Robert Hayden, and, of course, in Melville’s Moby-Dick. I am particularly interested in Melville, as he foresaw, even in the 19th century, the sweeping changes we experience today, especially in regard to the consequences technology, complex forms of communication, and globalization have on society. He detected how fractured the world was becoming, despite the fact economies and nations were becoming more and more interdependent and politically integrated. The Photo Essay/Digital Story class serves as an excellent format for students to explore communication and narrative using the cell phone camera, something all of us now carry on our person.
A dedication to arts education, including photography and photo essays, enriches teaching pedagogy and is intertwined throughout all core subjects. This exposure to the arts enhances the educational capacity and potential of every student, every day. To learn more about our Mission and Miami Country Day School, visit miamicountryday.org.
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