'Please Seat Yourself' Zarzour's Cafe captured in photography exhibit

Photographer Bradley Shelton's "Please Seat Yourself" photo essay is on display at The Northshore Gallery of Contemporary Art. The three-year project documents the daily life of Zarzour's Cafe, 1627 Rossville Ave. Contributed Photo by Bradley Shelton

Bradley Shelton Contributed Photo by Bradley Shelton

Photographer Bradley Shelton just laughs when asked how he managed to capture an image of Joe "Dixie" Fuller when his lips weren't moving.

The picture, one of almost 50 that make up the "Please Seat Yourself" exhibition on display at The Northshore Gallery of Contemporary Art, features the husband-and-wife team of Shannon and Dixie Fuller. The two, along with Dixie's mother Shirley, are the owner/operators of Zarzour's Cafe, the city's oldest continuously run restaurant and the subject of Shelton's three-year effort to document the daily life of the cafe and its staff. The photo essay includes shots of food, the staff, the walls, the menus and anything else that caught Shelton's eye.

Dixie, whose other job is talent and production coordinator of Friends of the Festival, which produces Riverbend, is a bit of a talker, as is Shannon, who greets regulars and newbies to the restaurant as if they were family. That's part of what made the cafe interesting to Shelton, who discovered Zarzour's eight years ago when he first moved here from Alabama.

An architect by trade, Shelton discovered his love for photography at Auburn University, where he signed up for what he thought was going to crip course. It was not, but he found he liked the similarities between taking pictures and architecture -- taking note of shapes and shadows -- and the process of pre-visualizing a photo.

At Zarzour's, opened in 1918 by Charles Zarzour and operated by family members ever since, Shelton also found a business that has been in the same location since its first day. It reeks with history and character, and part of that is because of the people who run it.

"Chattanooga has several restaurants with lots of history -- Nikki's. Griffith's Hot Dogs. Bea's," Shelton says. "But I have never experienced a place like Zarzour's. There is definitely an attraction there that was special to me."

Zarzour's is both a neighborhood cafe and a place where doctors, lawyers, politicians, truck drivers, mechanics and constructions workers go for a burger, a salmon cake, 'nana puddin' or a slice of icebox pie. And response to Shelton's project, the Fullers say, has been overwhelmingly positive.

"I think the pictures are great," says Shannon. "We've had a lot of people comment on them."

Dixie says he's heard from regulars who have purchased photographs for their home or office.

"It's very cool what he's done," he says.

As would be expected, Zarzour's has more than its share of regulars, including Ellen Hays.

"It's not just special because it has the best cheeseburger and fries in town but the warmth and welcoming one feels when you enter," she says. "Zarzour's has been a neighborhood treasure for decades and now Brad Shelton's magnificent photographs memorialize this Southside institution forever."

Zarzour's Cafe co-owner Shannon Fuller is pictured In a piece called "Tommy-Las Vegas." Contributed Photo by Bradley Shelton

Shelton first asked Shannon if he could take a few pictures three years ago. It was a couple of weeks, Shelton says, before she and the staff realized how serious he was.

"I think when I started showing them what I was getting, they kind of changed a little and got into it."

He visited, often later in the afternoon when things weren't so busy, but also whenever the muse struck him. Sometimes he just went for lunch and, if he saw an image he liked, he'd take a picture, sometimes with his cellphone when he didn't have his Nikon D-700 camera with him.

All photos were taken in color, then processed through computer software such as Photoshop or Lightroom. They are printed with archival pigment ink on resin-coated fine paper.

Shelton says he could have approached the project in several ways. He could have photographed the regulars or the food, for example, but realized about 18 months ago that it was about the staff, which totals three people. While all three do a bit of everything, Shannon mans the grill, while Mary Smith does the rest of the cooking, and Mallory Davis handles the dishes; all three wait tables.

"Places like this don't exist anymore in most places," Shelton says. "It's part of our past and we should appreciate places like this. How often do you get to talk to the people who make the food? I wanted to pay homage to them."

Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.