Motion Pictures Film of the Week: Andy Southard Jr's Home Movies

It was 2009, and I found myself strapped to a phone line for over two hours, caught in the orbit of Andy—a man whose dedication to the craft of photography bordered on religious mania. The call was supposed to be prep for some interview feature, but it turned into a freewheeling symposium on obsession, artistry, and sheer unrelenting grit. Andy was a goddamned dynamo. And I needed to know: how the hell did he take so many photos? What kind of lunatic workflow powers a man like that?

His reply was simple, almost unnervingly so: “I carried a camera with me at all times. If I was going to dinner, I took my camera. If I was going to the store, I took my camera. My camera was just an extension of my hand for much of my life.”

An extension of his hand. Like a six-shooter for an outlaw, or a drink for a dying man. That camera was him, and there was no separating the two. I could feel his conviction crackling through the receiver.

“I try to do that,” I confessed, “but I get jaded. Lazy. And sometimes… well, I feel self-conscious about it. Like, I’ll have this camera swinging around my neck, and I catch people looking at me like I’m some kind of tourist in life, you know? It feels ridiculous.”

Andy didn’t hesitate, didn’t indulge my neuroses for even a second: “No. I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is getting the shot.”

That was Andy. A dude. A real dude. No pretenses, no excuses. Just raw, unfiltered drive to capture the world exactly as he saw it—one frame at a time. Dedicated, thoughtful, relentless.

I really don't know if there was anyone more important to this thing of ours than Andy Southard.