All right, let's do this. Peanut, if you're staying in the room, no talking. Hello and welcome to the Photo Work Podcast, the talky and touchy feely version of my book photo 40 photographers on process and Practice. Hello, everyone. I'm Sasha Wolf, recording from Woodstock, New York, and I'm joined, as usual, by my friend and producer, Mr. Michael Choven. Dalton. Hello, Michael.
Hey, there. How are you feeling? How. How's the leg?
The leg is fine. I mean, it's not fine, but it will be. Yep. Got the MRI done. Got the results.
Excellent.
Yeah. Took a while. And just knowing, even though it wasn't great news, but just knowing is a lot better than the sort of waiting around. But anyway, yep, severe meniscus tear, the posterior part of the meniscus and not in a good location. So lots of rehab and then hopefully avoid surgery. But for all our friends out there, I bump into you and I'm hobbling around. That's why. But again, this too shall pass. No big deal in the scheme of things.
We almost got together.
We did almost get together, but there was a snowstorm.
Oh, yeah, you were going to come.
Up the other day, and we had our first snow up here. But we will reunite soon enough. How are you doing?
Yes, I'm doing fine. Closing out the semester once we come back from Thanksgiving, there's only like a week left, I think, or a week and a half, and then it's just cruising to the end.
Yep, got it. Well, yes, this episode is going to. You and I are actually talking On Sunday, the 24th, I think is today, and the show will drop tomorrow and Thanksgiving week and want to wish everyone really good holidays if they celebrate Thanksgiving or if they're just getting a little time off. I hope folks enjoy it. And for all our overseas listeners.
That's right.
Sorry. It's another week. It's just another week. Have a good week, but you won't overeat to the point of severe stomach cramps like the rest of us will and go to bed in a. With a deep sense of shame or.
Have to face relatives who might differ with you politically. Yes.
Yeah, there's that. I'm going to be sort of protected from that. I'm thankful.
Oh, good for you.
Yeah. But I won't be protected from the.
The rest of it.
The rest of it. I won't be protected from, like, you know, the deep feeling of shame trying to figure out why I had that third piece of pie.
I thought you were talking. I thought we were talking about the country, but no, you're okay.
No, no, sorry. I'm already trying to come to terms with my. The overeating that I'll. I'll be doing.
Yes, yes. Good, good. Stay focused. Little steps.
Oh, man. So a few things before we get to the episode, and it's an incredible episode, I think. Oh, yes. Our guest this week was the photographer, the artist, Christian Patterson was really thrilled to finally get a chance to talk with Christian and spend some time with him. And Christian and I didn't know each other, and so it was really an opportunity for us to get to know one another. And it was really my great pleasure. I really. I just loved the entire conversation and I learned a lot from him. And so absolutely. Thank you, Christian, for your generosity in this episode.
I had a funny moment with Christian at. From our sponsor, Picture House of Spa Darkroom, which I'll get to in a. In a minute. But I was at their last event with Matthew Gennatempo, and I heard someone say Christian Patterson was in the audience. And so I texted him because we had the same room. Yes. And he was two rows in front of me with his back to me. And so, you know when you got through, when someone looks at their phone.
Right. Yep.
So we got to meet in person. It was really lovely.
Yeah, that's nice. He's a lovely person.
And then speaking of picture house, on December 7, they are having a conversation with a bunch of guests. They will be hosting some of. And I'm gonna say it and don't laugh. Latoya Edisoni's published artist, say what Now? Yeah. An Italian publisher who I know through Andrea Modica. Lovely people. Andrea Modica is one of the guests along with Mary Ellen Bartley, Greg Miller, Philip Toledano, Kristin Joy Imac, Lois Connor, Angela Cappetta, and Holly Linton. And that will be on Saturday, December 7, from 4 to 7pm that is incredible.
Yeah. That's quite a lineup. I was going to say, wow. Friends of ours. How Wonderful.
So visit phtsdr.com now. It doesn't say you have to RSVP, but it might not be a bad idea to give them a call or stop by.
Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people are going to show up for that wonderful group of artists. Well, I have. I don't know if it's an announcement, if I'm being honest. I think it's a plea. It's that time of year, so, you know, I don't want to get deep into. I was thinking about this before we started recording, like, how long I could drone on about the importance of supporting the podcast, but I feel like that's sort of obvious. So I think I'm just going to do. I may have done this last year. Reaching for some basic psychology here. I'd like everyone who has even a few dollars of cash they can spare to go right now to Photowork Foundation. Photowork Foundation. And right on the landing page, if you scroll down, okay, if you're driving, don't do this. Do it when you get home. Everyone else, you can scroll down and you'll see a support us button. And if you click on that, it's super easy. It takes you to a page and you can make a donation. I will just say, you know, look, the podcast has been growing in leaps and bounds. We know how many people listen to it. We know they listen to it around the world. We have thousands and thousands of subscribers. We get a lot of very beautiful and moving emails from folks. You know, I'm not going to threaten people and say if you want it to continue, because I think that's unseemly.
Yeah, just a little note on that. Thousands and thousands of free subscribers.
Right? That's right, yes. You know, a lot of podcasts are putting their archive behind the paywall now. We're not doing that. I mean, the whole goal of the foundation is to provide arts education and mentorship to photographers. Free arts education and mentorship. And that's our goal, that's our mission statement. And I'm very proud to say the foundation has received, in just its second full year of operation, numerous grants this year. So, you know, all is going well and we are expanding. We are just coming to the end, the jury of picking not three, but six Junior Fellows for this year's Junior Fellow. That will be announced very soon. And we're adding another fellowship, and that will be announced very soon. All of this took a lot of my time of raising money over the past year. It will take a lot of my time raising money this coming year. As we continue to grow, that's becoming more and more my job. But please, folks, you know, help us out. It's really meaningful. It really adds up. And it's not just a token donation. It's extremely helpful. So please take that seriously and just throw in what you can spare or, you know, what it's worth to you, and we would be really, really grateful. And I'm just going to say, I don't want to see 20 donations. I don't want to see 50 donations. I want to see a lot more than that really want to feel like that this is valuable to you all and you understand that we are a non profit and we need that support. So. Okay, I did a little lecturing. Sorry, I'm incapable of keeping anything short, as we all know. But thank you all very, very much ahead of time. And Michael, let's talk about the show.
Absolutely. Christian Patterson is brilliant. Let's just start with that. Yeah, he really is. Yeah. And to listen to the way he investigates his work, he researches his work and then dives into that work is incredibly inspiring. And he gets into a level, you know, we, you and I both have guests that we ask them about the process of putting a book together, the decisions that go into the collaboration with the. With the editors and all, and the idea of collaboration, and we get fantastic responses. But Christian's process and level of detail that he goes into about making work and making books is unlike, I think, anything I've heard before and I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, no, I concur with everything you just said. This is a super process oriented conversation and I think really valuable. I mean, I learned a lot and I was really, you know, you and I both talk a lot with people where mentoring in one form or another. You and I talk to each other about this, we talk to other colleagues about it. Trying to teach young artists how to not rely too strongly on the camera, but on their own intellect and ability to direct every aspect of the process and, you know, think of all the variables, all the possibilities, and then come up with a set of parameters under which they're going to operate or work on a particular project. And this episode with Christian is really all about that. And I'm so grateful to him, just to be honest. You know, when a guest comes on and is willing to be so generous and open in a way that translates into such valuable teaching and sharing, I'm so appreciative. So, Christian, thank you.
This is a definition of being present because Christianity just thought about each response and nothing feels hurried or rushed or like, oh, I have to go. You know, it's just really amazing. And the episode's a little over an hour, but incredible hour. And towards the end, you start talking a little bit about the art world. I found that very enjoyable. Very entertaining and enjoyable.
Yep. Always fun to end by knocking the art world on its corrective head.
Yeah, absolutely.
I have no shame about doing that, even though I'm in the art world.
Oh, that's right. Yeah. Because who knows it better?
Thank you. Thank you for writing me off the hook for my Hypocrisy. Anyway. All right, well, Michael, if you don't mind, please take it away.
My pleasure. And here is your conversation with Christian Patterson.
Christian Patterson, welcome to the Photo Work podcast. It's great to have you on, especially after being in your brain with such focus and intensity over the past number of weeks, particularly the past few days. It was really a wild experience. So, anyway, thank you so much for coming on.
Thanks for having me.
You and I were just joking around that you're the first guest who ever sent me research, because, you know, I like to do research on my guests. And so a box arrived in the mail, a pretty big box, and contained a lot of binders and books, which was really amazing. So I've had quite an incredible journey through your inner life and your artistic output. So before I start the inquisition, tell the folks listening about yourself and where you're from, where you grew up, how you made your way in the photo world.
Well, I'm from a fairly small town, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which, it's a French name and the English translation is Bottom of the Lake, because when you look at a map, the town sits at the very southern tip of a fairly large inland lake. And yeah, so it's. I've. I've always liked that name. And over time I've come to appreciate that, that name in new ways and the way in which it can refer to life time, life over time, and memory and the murkiness of memory, thinking about being underwater at the bottom of the lake and looking back on all of that. But I'm from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. I spent my entire childhood and adolescence and some of my early adulthood there. I went to the University of Wisconsin, did not study art, did not study photography, actually moved to New York to pursue completely different work. But arriving here, living here, I wanted to explore the city. And so I was sort of a tourist in my new hometown and would go out on the weekends and explore New York City and often, or really always take a camera with me. Started out making some casual snapshots and feeling an interest in making good pictures, and then it being New York City and wanting to take it all in and everything that it had to offer. I visited bookstores and galleries and museums and began seeing for the first time, really what we might consider to be so called fine art photography. And it inspired me to try to make better pictures. I very clearly remember visiting St. Mark's Bookstore when it was still around. I think the year might have been maybe 1999. And there I found my first William Eggleston book and was immediately taken with it and feeling some sort of connection to it and not only the types of pictures, but when they were made. And that led me to exploring more of Eggleston's work and then through that discovering other work that had been made by other artists around the same time. And it was just a very self led and very organic process. But I, I continued to look and I continued to try and to try to make photographs and began pinning drugstore prints to the walls of my tiny little illegal sublet apartment in Brooklyn and slowly learning how to edit and to pair or sequence images. Eventually, I guess I had some vacation time that I had earned at my job and I decided that I wanted to go to Memphis, Tennessee and see this place where all of these amazing photographs had been made. And I thought, well, if I'm, if I'm going to go there, why not see whatever Eggleston work I can, maybe some prints or something. I wonder if I could somehow find him or connect with him. And again, I think it was 99 or 2000 or maybe it might have been a year or two later, 2000, 2001, but there was no Google. At least I don't think there was. I don't remember being aware of it, but I did get on the Internet and I started searching for Eggleston Memphis and just scrolling through page after page of search results and eventually found a listing for something called the Eggleston Artistic Trust. I didn't really know what that was, but it must have been something. I picked up the phone and I called and Bill's son Winston answered and was very kind and, and invited me to stop and say hello when I was in Memphis. And so I did. And we just immediately hit it off for so many reasons, both clearly big fans of his dad's work, but also a similar age and many other shared interests in music and other things. And I think I revisited Memphis twice more within a year. And I would make a point of trying to see them when they happened to be in New York City to attend an opening or something. And this friendship developed and I eventually introduced to them the idea of working with them again. I was completely self taught and I thought it might be a great opportunity, a great way of learning more without actually having to go to school. And in the spring of 2002, I think it was, I moved to Memphis, Tennessee. I left New York City and thought that I might be there for six months. I ended up staying for three years, working closely with the Eggleston's as their first ever archivist and helping them to organize their analog archives and transition into the digital world. Building a database and learn so much not only from having access to Bill's entire body of work and seeing where all those gems had come from and seeing all the other images and the mistakes or the lesser images, but also just learning a lot about the process of being an artist, being a successful artist, working with galleries, magazines, licensing images, loaning works, auditioning work so much. It was a great, great experience. And yeah, I ended up staying much longer than expected because it was just we all got along so well and it was such a mutually benefic situation.
Were you also. Can I just ask you what I know everyone listening is going to be thinking as well, or wondering. Did you also learn directly from William Eggleston? Did you learn from Bill? Were you sitting around asking him questions, talking about why did you make this picture? How did you see this subject? What were you thinking? I mean, color, his use of color? I mean, did you get into that type of stuff with him?
Not really. I think that when I first moved there, I must have been. I mean, surely I would have been young and curious and eager and I may have asked him some questions. I don't remember what the questions might have been, but I feel pretty confident in saying that the answers would have been elusive at best. If you've ever read an interview or seen a talk or a conversation with Bill, you know that he's very reticent and he has a way with words, but he can be very reticent. And I don't know if avoidant is the right word, but just sort of dismissive of the idea that these photographs can actually be effectively talked about. And it didn't take me long. It didn't take long for me to begin to understand that that was his. That was just his way. That was his preferred way of being. And we shared a lot of time together and we shared plenty of conversations, but they were never really getting into the nitty gritty of how or why. It would always be more of just an appreciation, a mutual appreciation. I mean, he was always very kind and very generous with either looking at my images or saying nice things about them. And we would probably.
That must have been encouraging.
Yeah, it was. Although I was, you know, I was there for so long that I had also had plenty of other opportunities for him to observe him interacting with other photographers. And he was just generally very kind and generous with his words or his praise. And so which. It's a nice attitude to have. And he wasn't there to be a critic. Yeah, yeah. And in the end, so much of it is about just being yourself and encouraging people to be themselves in their creativity. We shared we would have much richer conversations over things like music or barbecue or life growing up in Mississippi. He would prefer to talk about those things than to try to analyze his work.
I understand. Let me ask you another question, going a little bit further back, because I'm really curious. You said after you moved to New York, you started taking a camera out with you when you would, you know, roam around. And I'm just curious why. I mean, you know, I understand people. It makes sense now. Everyone has a camera with them all the time on their phone. But what was the impetus then to. I mean, if you didn't take any photography classes or you weren't photographing yet, or you didn't have any particular connection to fine art photography or whatever, why did you start carrying a camera around?
Well, I think maybe I had sort of glossed over it, but I hadn't made some pictures in high school, but I never thought of myself as a photographer or someone who was particularly interested in photography. I had made a few pictures for the school yearbook. I would sometimes have a camera when I was hanging out with my friends, but that was not a very common thing. I had traveled a bit, I had been overseas, and, you know, one is always compelled to bring a camera when seeing new places. And it just sort of slowly became something. Something that I would have with me when I would be seeing new places or new things. But it. But it was not anything approaching. I would hesitate to even call it a hobby at that point.
Sounds like a really organic, slow development of your, you know, realizing you wanted to use a camera to be in the world, express yourself, et cetera, which is interesting.
The funny thing is, is that, I mean, New York played a big role in influencing me to get out and explore and make pictures. But I've never done anything with any pictures made in New York. And I never. I rarely make pictures of New York. I live here. I like New York. I benefit from the cultural richness that it offers. But I tend to seek out other types of places when I'm actually thinking about making something.
So you sort of burst upon the scene. It's such a terrible expression. But anyway, when you published a book with Mac called Red Headed Peckerwood, let's talk about that project and what that was like for you sort of publishing this book. I think it was 2011.
That's correct. Although I'll just briefly mention, and we don't have to go into it, but I mean, that was definitely more of. More significantly noticed and recognized work for me. But I had previously published a book. I had previously shown work in New York, San Francisco, Cologne, Hamburg, I think. But Redheaded Pickerwood was. It just became a much bigger thing than anything I had done before.
Yeah, no, you didn't just fall off the apple cart, but it definitely was. I mean, I remember it really well. You know, it was just sort of everywhere and the thing people were talking about for many reasons. So why don't you tell folks about that book, that project, and we can talk about it a bit. I do want to, you know, of course, make sure we leave plenty of time for your newest publication, Gone Co, which is really an incredible achievement. But go ahead and tell folks about Redheaded Peckerwood, who may not, the two or three people who may not know about it.
Well, during the time that I lived in Memphis, I spent a lot of time exploring Memphis and sometimes going down into Mississippi. I made a lot of color photographs in Memphis. And, you know, the Eggleston influence was heavy and apparent. I did that for three years. I began showing the work, but I also slowly began to become aware of the fact I'm more self aware, I guess, just aware of the fact that that influence was there. It was very apparent to me and to plenty of others, I'm sure, very easy to see. And I thought, well, this was. This has been a wonderful experience, a very unique experience. I, you know, I basically got to work very closely with the one artist who I would have most liked to work with. It was great, but almost too much of a good thing. And I was already beginning to figure out how I could disengage, step away, step out of that, of Eggleston's shadow or the shadow of his influence, maybe return to New York, maybe begin showing that early work elsewhere, but not really knowing just what I might do next or how I might be able to do something new and different and more my own. And it was really just by luck. So much of photography is luck and just being able to. To be able to recognize that moment and to grab onto that luck when you have it. But I happened to. During the time that I was still living in Memphis, I had not yet moved back to New York. I happened to go to a theater and see a screening of Terrence Malick's film Badlands. And it was very much like seeing Eggleston's work for the first time. I just was so taken with it, so absorbed, so swept. Amazing film. And I say that in a very unbiased way. I mean, the way that it is.
It'S considered one of the greatest films of the American sort of classic, late 60s, early 70s period of filmmaking before it all went to hell in a handbag with blockbusters and whatnot.
Yeah. So I was just very taken with the film, the story, the plotline, the acting, the cinematography, the music. It's a great film. And I wondered, I wanted to learn more about the film. Had no idea that it was actually based on a true story, loosely based on a true story inspired by that true crime story. But that intrigued me. And as I began researching that true story, I found it to be even more prolific and tragic and strange and just full of so many fascinating details that would paint pictures in my mind, which, of course, were not only inspired by my own imagination, but my experience of the film. And I thought it might be interesting. It started off as a very simple idea. I just thought it might be interesting to travel to Nebraska, where this killing spree had taken place, and travel through that same landscape that had been charged by those events and make photographs. I didn't know what would be there. I didn't know what I might find. I didn't know if there would be any visible traces of that story left out there in that world, in that landscape, nearly 50 years after the fact. And after that first trip, I remember thinking, okay, I've made some good photographs. I have seen a few things that, you know, places that do have some specific connection to this story, but there just wasn't. It just didn't feel like that there was enough there. And I had started off in Lincoln, Nebraska, more on the eastern side of the state, and then traveled 500 miles west out to Douglas, Wyoming, which was sort of the end of the road for these two teenagers. And then turned around and drove back to Lincoln, I think, and then was eventually going to drive back to Memphis. But before I left Lincoln, I decided that I should take the opportunity to explore any local libraries or archives or museums. And that opened up a whole new world of possibilities to me. I began seeing other photographs, press prints, police photographs, documents, court transcripts, personal belongings that had, you know, things that had belonged to her had been touched by the hands of these two teenagers or their victims. And, yeah, it was really thrilling. And charging it charged the story and sort of reactivated it in a way that I found very moving and inspiring. And I just began to think this could be the way forward this. This could create for me, anyway, a new and different way of dealing with this story from the past, combining my own photographs with some of these archival elements. And it, you know, it took five years and five, I think, five different visits during five successive cold, harsh January. I always visited and traveled through Nebraska at the same time of year when the events had originally taken place. But it just slowly evolved into, I don't know, something, I guess, a bit more reminiscent of a detective's file in a way, or approaching the story in this more multifaceted way, presenting a mix of photographs, documents and objects as these somewhat fragmentary cues or clues to be sifted through by the viewer like a detective.
Let me just make a few things clear for folks in case they haven't seen Badlands or they don't know the story. And I don't want to. There's no reason to get too into the details of what really happened, because that's not the point, but just the outline. In 1958, Charles Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate, who were teenagers. I mean, she was quite young, 14 or 15. Charles, 14. Charles was a bit older, but obviously two people whose brains were not yet fully formed. And I'm not trying to be funny, but, you know, adolescence really fell into a relationship that was fueled by a lot of what I assume must have been rage because they wound up going on a killing spree and ultimately killing, I think, 10 people, completely innocent people, goes without saying, but really, in just, you know, people they came upon. I mean, just. It was very random and brutal. He was executed. They were caught. He was executed. She was sent to prison and eventually paroled. Their story has inspired many books and films. Badlands, I think, being the most famous. You said at one point, just now when you were talking, that as you were sort of looking into it, you found it moving. Can you talk about that? Because I do think that it would be difficult to work on a project like this for five years without finding it moving in some way or another. I mean, otherwise it's just a complete intellectual exercise. So in what way? What really compelled you on an emotional level to want to do this? Because it's. It's a wacky project, and I mean, it's, you know, it's. It's out of the box in so many ways. I mean, I think it's not the first, but I think it's a sort of early example of what's become extremely, extremely common now, which is the mixing of archival and newly created imagery, the mixing of fragments of text of artifacts, black and white in color. I mean, the book has all of that, the narrative elements that are taken, thrown up in the air and then rearranged to the point where it's no longer a narrative because it's so disembodied or pulled away from its narrative. There is no opening statement or anything from you to tell us what it is we are looking at. Although there is some really beautiful writing that is included in a pamphlet that's its own really interesting design element with writing by Lucy Sant, a critic and just amazing writer, and the wonderful Karen Irvine, who's the chief curator and deputy director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. So there is some writing that helps you out at a certain point, sort of tucked away in this. In this pamphlet. But anyway, just back to my original question.
This is a big, sprawling question. Sasha.
Yeah, that's. That's what. Yeah, that's my specialty. For which I really should apologize to both the guests and the listeners in every episode. How long it actually takes me to get my question out. So.
Yeah.
What's. What's moving? What was moving about it?
Well, let me just start by saying. I'd like to. I'd like to start by responding to your summary or your recounting of the story, which very much aligns with the, I don't know, the popular understanding of the story, what happened, who did what. But it's very common for people to say, oh, these two teenage killers, when in fact, I believe. And I've never. I didn't really make a point of saying this because I guess because it took a long time for me to arrive at this feeling, to do enough research to arrive at this belief or this position that I have. But I personally believe that Carol Ann Fugue was completely innocent and an innocent hostage. I think it's very easy for you to imagine or understand why. He was 19. She was 14. She was very small and very inexperienced in so many ways. And there have been. There have been books and I think a TV series that have come out in subsequent years that go a long way in explaining the many. The many ways in which she did not. She was not treated fairly. She did not receive a fair trial. There's a book called the Twelfth Victim, and I forget the name of the TV series, but I think there was something that came out on Showtime that went some ways to basically taking the 12th victim and turning it into a miniseries. I haven't seen it, but, you know, Miranda rights did not exist at the time. They were questioned for hours, giving Conflicting confessions, the first of which Charlie said that she was completely innocent. And they slowly turned him against her. No lawyers. Charlie was the star witness at her trial, which is completely ridiculous. Anyway, I just wanted to start. I just started.
Yeah, no, that's very important. Thank you.
By saying that.
Yeah.
And before I get into the why I felt moved or the emotional connection that I might have felt. You mentioned the book and text in the book. And yes, it does have this pamphlet. However, the book also begins with a sort of a confession letter that was written before they were captured. And it's. I think it's interesting to have some initial introduction or explanation of what you're about to see coming from. Straight from the hands of. Or the mind of the killer. It's a five. I think it might be a five page confession letter written by Starkweather when they were sort of in the middle of this whole spree. And a notable thing about the letter is that it begins in a sort of all caps printed letter words written out very carefully in all caps. And then I don't know if he felt rushed or just was becoming distracted or what. But it very quickly changes into a script. Like a cursive. Yeah, cursive script. Yes. And the voice of the narrator or the writer of the letter also changes. And it sort of changes very quickly from what seems to be her voice to his. And so if you just take a moment to study the letter, it becomes apparent that he had written the whole thing as a way of trying to cover his own ass, I guess you could say.
And I think it says, this is for the law, right?
Yes. The letter was inside an envelope that had the words for the law only scrawled across the front of it. And I think the letter was inside his jacket pocket or something like that when they were captured. As for the. I'm trying to hit all the. Hit all the marks here. As for the personal connection or why I felt moved. I mean, there's so many heavy things, themes wrapped up in this true crime story that I think would be very easy for many people to connect with. I mean, we've all been young, we've all been teenagers. We've all felt that angst and that frustration, huge emotion. And no matter how old you get, I think most of us remain very fully or at least partially young at heart. I didn't go on a killing spree, but I did have a. A relationship with a young girl when I was much younger. It was a similar sort of age gap. There was that. I wouldn't say that was significant, but I felt some empathy there or some understanding. Again, there was the teenage thing. There was the landscape. I grew up in the Midwest, not on the Plains, but I grew up in the Midwest and was familiar with those cold, harsh winters. It all felt fairly familiar to me. And then, you know, the loss of innocence, and that was a real heavy part of it for me. It was thinking about not only Carol Ann and what she went through, but what everyone. What we all go through at some point in our lives, which is this, I think, a very apparent, very palpable sense of, like, loss of innocence and transitioning from adolescence to adulthood and, I don't know, reckoning with yourself and your life. In a way, that's a very big general statement. But so there's all of that. And then just being alone in these places, in this landscape for a week at a time, usually not knowing anyone, but traveling alone in my car along that path, through that landscape, through those. That snowy landscape where on overcast days, it feels like everything is white and gray. And you just sort of lose a sense of what is up and what is down and you're alone with your thoughts for hundreds of miles. And in a landscape where sometimes a telephone pole is exciting because there's just nothing there. Yeah, I guess I had plenty of time to ruminate on. On the story, what I knew of it, to imagine myself in their place, what it must have felt like to be on the run, under duress, everyone out looking for you and all. That said, I never wanted to be biased towards them. I never wanted to allow myself to let go of all of the pain and that all of the families, the victims and their families had experienced. I had made connections with people who were members of families or were somehow connected with the story in various ways. Yeah, I wanted to take a fairly, I hope, impartial approach to it all. Making photographs, collecting some of these archival elements and really laying it out, spreading it out as a collection of. I can't fairly use the word facts.
When you were putting the book together or thinking about the book or still out there making work? I don't know at what point you started to think about the form of the book, but are you thinking that you are going to. Or want to create something that is fairly new in terms of form or. Okay, yeah, let's talk about that, because I think, you know, you said earlier that you think a lot of successful photography, you didn't use the word successful. I am, but photography comes down to luck. I actually totally disagree, but I love Your. There's something cheeky and optimistic about that. What you think? I think it comes down to diligence and making choices and not letting the camera do the work and always choice, choice, choice, which I think is what you do. Actually, it's all true. In fact, what I really, really, really, really admire, I could use a million reallys and it wouldn't be too much about your practice, is I see all the choices you're making and I just have so much respect for that.
Oh, thank you. That's all true. I mean, I'm not trying to lean into all the wonderful things that you're saying about me, but what I am saying is that I think we're both right. I am very diligent, I am very dedicated. I tend to obsess over things for long periods of time. And through those long periods of time in the process, I eventually arrive at something that, yeah, this is work ethic.
Yeah, your work ethic is just. You don't have to pat yourself on the back. I'm perfectly happy to do it. Your work ethic is just mind boggling to me. And I feel like I could teach a course because I talk to young photographers all the time and they always want to know, how do I make it? And I'm always talking about, you know, work ethic. And it's not just about innate talent. They really, really have to figure out how to stop relying on the camera. And it's exactly what you do. So tell me about, you know, figuring out that you want to make something that that is a different form than things you've seen before. Because it's really unusual. It just is.
Well, during the time that I lived in Memphis, as I said, I was working closely with Eggleston. But beyond that, I had very, very limited access to other photographers, other ways of seeing and experiencing photography in real life other than my own. And so books played a very important role in seeing other work. And having books shipped to me in Memphis, I think probably most often ordered from photoeye at that time. It was a very important thing for me and I would treasure those books and really pore over them. And it's really difficult for me to explain or I don't know how to explain my growth or my transition away from, let's say, more traditional photographic bookmaking and what could very easily and perhaps most accurately be described with one word, a catalog. I slowly began discovering other books that had other interests or other concerns, that were thinking more conceptually and more narratively and had so much more to offer as an experience within, in the book. And. Yeah, so over the course of, I don't know, probably a five year period, I just slowly, my interest began drifting more into more conceptual work. And there was so much about Redhead of Peckerwood, the making of the work, going into archives, encountering all these different materials that just very, very quickly and just very directly influenced what form that it might take. But I was very dead set on the idea of creating something that would be. I had never seen anything like it before. A book that, in my limited experience anyway, and sort of visual fluency at the time, I hadn't seen anything quite like it. I felt confident that I had something and just sort of embraced it and ran with it. Later on, after making a sort of a maquette of redheaded Peckerwood and sharing it with a select few people, there were a few people who said, oh, have you ever seen these murder dossiers or crime dossiers? What I'm referring to is that in the 1930s, these two British authors, Dennis Wheatley and JG Links, had collaborated on a series of murder mystery novelettes. That they were adventurous books, almost like a game. Murder mysteries presented in book form, but designed and put together physically in a way that resembled a detective's file. Brown paperboard or cardboard paperboard covers tied together with a ribbon going through the spine and opening the book, you would. You would encounter typewritten pages interspersed with a wild variety of inserted materials. All things that were facsimiles of, or in some cases, just what seemed to be actual pieces of what had been referred to in the murder mystery text. So photographs, often shot in a clearly very forensic fashion. Blueprints, samples of fingerprints and, oh, a fabric swatch that had supposedly come from a bloody curtain. So it was a fabric, like a flowery fabric swatch. And it had what appeared to be a blood stain on it. And it just kept getting better and better. There were these small glassine envelopes that had actual pieces of hair in them, used burned matchsticks. They were just wonderful. And again, this, these, these books came out in the 1930s. There's, there's a small series of them. I don't know how many of them there are. They can still be found on ebay. They're wonderful. I was not aware of them, but I can. I immediately saw just how similar and how relevant they were. Much more adventurous than Redheaded Peckerwood. I mean, Redheaded Peckerwood had, I think it was maybe three different tipped in papers. And then the little booklet with the text and My Maquette for the book had a similar number of things, although they were all done differently and a bit more haptically and adventurously, I guess. Yeah. But I was. I was very determined to try to make something different with that book. And it opened making Redhead at Peckerwood. You know, it's its own thing, it's its own work. It's. It's a. It's based on a true crime story completely its own subject matter. And I really have no interest in doing any other crime related work. It's not a great personal interest of or obsession of mine any more than anyone else's. But there was something about the process of making that work and bringing other objects and material in and working with a sign painter to create the hand painted signs, going to a shooting range and using a shotgun to blast paper boards to create something else to go into the. All these different things that really just opened up my. I always cringe at using this word, but opened up my practice in a way that. So I continue to make photographs. Photographs continue to be the heart of my work, but I usually end up surrounding them with other things that are inspired by the concept or narrative at play in the work. And that continued with the subsequent book, Bottom of the Lake and continue has continued with the new one, Gonko.
Let's talk about Gonko. I just don't think we have time to get into Bottom of the Lake. And I'm glad you mentioned it so people know about it and we'll of course put a link to it on the show page. But let's get to Gongko, which is brand new. And look, I think I know why people cringe using certain words that feel very precious and you know, it can be uncomfortable. But I think that practice is a good word because you have a very specific practice. I don't know what else to call it. It is really, you know, something you brought forth from Red Headed Peckerwood through Bottom of the Lake and into Gong Co. Particularly where you see a lot of the same techniques used. And this book is so different in subject matter and yet has a similar melancholy feel, I think. So let's talk about it. Why don't you start by telling people what it is and then get to some questions I have.
Well, let's see. During the time that I lived in Memphis, I would often travel down into Mississippi. Usually when I got tired of making endlessly driving up and down all the streets of Memphis and. And trying to make photographs there. I would sometimes take a break and spend a day or A weekend driving down into Mississippi, which is right there. Memphis sits very close to the southwestern corner of Tennessee and along the border with Mississippi. And Memphis is for all practical purposes the cultural capital of Mississippi. And there were a few times that I drove all the way from Memphis to New Orleans. And on this particular day that really began the long, many years long process of working on Gonko. On that particular day I was driving from Memphis to New Orleans. It was a hot summer day. I was about 30 miles south of Clarksdale and I felt thirsty. And I saw what appeared to be a town approaching. There was basically a little, a little line of trees. And I thought that I could see the shapes of buildings peeking out from behind the trees. And so I exited the highway, Highway 61, and doubled back along this smaller road, old Highway 61, and found myself in Marigold, Mississippi. And as I do, and as photographers do, I had my eyes open and parked my car and got out, walked around, began exploring a little bit, but looking for that, for something cool to drink, looking for a soda pop, looking for a grocery store. And I eventually caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a grocery store and walked towards it. And it looked very old. It looked like it might not even be opened, it might be abandoned. But the door did open. I walked inside and it was just a moment, it was one of those moments where you. I just felt I had crossed the threshold into another, obviously another place, but maybe even another time. This little one room grocery store had its own atmosphere, its own temperature, its own smell. And I caught a glimpse of some old, seemingly quite old products on the shelves. It was all immediately very curious to me. And as I began walking around the grocery store, I just couldn't believe what I saw. The shelves scattered with products that were seemingly 30 to 50 years old. It was this strange time warp of a place, really just a curiosity. I had a little. I had a pocket camera and made a few snapshots, purchased a soda pop pop back in my car and continued on my way to New Orleans, but couldn't stop thinking about the place. And whenever I would return to that part of the Mississippi Delta, I would make a point of swinging through the town and checking to see if the grocery store was open. And for many years it was. You know, I couldn't help but wonder if there might be something that I could do there. Maybe I can make some photographs. I eventually stumbled upon this Andy Warhol quote. All department stores will become museums and all museums will become department stores. And I thought, oh, that's a really Interesting way of thinking about this place, of framing it. And it is its own very unique kind of Southern American manifestation of that idea. When I first discovered the place, there was a novelty to it. There was a nostalgia to it. It was this interesting old place, full of interesting old stuff. And initially I thought, oh, yeah, I could make some photographs here. I might even be able to make photographs of a bunch of the products or the objects that turned out to be photographing the content of the place. That turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. But over time, the project took on a completely different and much larger meaning to me personally. And I think it's very easy for. For other people to see in the pictures and the various things that I've done with the work or the way that it's presented in the book. But over the course of, you know, it's really a 15 to 20 year time period, I watched this place continue to decline, to eventually die with the doors being officially closed. And then I continued to access the space and continued to witness and document its continued decay. And all of that coincided with a particular time in my life when I was aging into and through my 40s. And toward the end, dovetailed with the pandemic, which was its own very dystopian time. And, yeah, it just. The store took on this. What now seems very, very obvious, but was not apparent to me when I first walked in, but took on this other, more existential, allegorical kind of meaning. And I've tried to allude to that in various ways in the book, not only through the photographs, but again, through some of the other touches, the way that the book looks and various other printed elements scattered over around its surfaces.
So I think it's really important to tell people that the book, again, is. And if I didn't make this clear with Redheaded Peckerwood, but I think it's really, really in the extreme with Gonko. The book is an incredible object. I mean, you've made it seem as though the pages have been aging. Molding the dust jacket, if you want to call it that, is like a brown paper bag type feeling with lots of writing that we can get to. There's so many things to get to. The actual cover itself is very, very faded, feels extremely old. There are so many elements. There's photographs that you made in situ. There's photographs that you made in your studio with objects that you brought home from the store. There are monoprints that you made of text, of things that are appropriate that go in the store. You know, cash only. Although that's not exactly what it says, but I don't have it right in front of me.
It says, today is cash.
Today is cash. Something about nothing on credit or.
No, don't ask for credit.
And these are wonderful monoprints that you made. I mean, it's really just an extraordinary object. I mean, there's just so many details. There's very faint writing on pages that you can actually barely see. You really have to sort of know it's there. So, again, incredibly diligent. But that just gives people sort of an idea. These are just luscious, incredibly spectacular color photographs. It's a big book. There's a lot of images. It takes place sort of in sections. First were outside the shop, then we're inside the shop. Then we're in the office of the shop. So you're sort of going in. And in one thing that's very striking to me, that when you just now were telling us the story of how you came upon the shop and you first went in, and this was a place that was started by, I think, Chinese American family.
Yes. The book is called Gong Ko. It's named after the place that you see in the book. It's a fascinating story. Maybe we get into that as well.
Yeah, no, I'd like to, but I want to ask you. You talked about going into the store and it, you know, obviously everything was already like an artifact and used that Warhol, wonderful Warhol quote. You didn't mention just now anything about the people who were working there. And there are no people in the book, and you never photograph people. And I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't just ask you about that. And you don't have to. You know, it doesn't have to be a complicated answer, but I just feel like it's just too obvious not to just. Just to ask you quickly about that.
Sure. I like people. I don't mind the idea of photographing people. I think it's something that's very difficult to do or to do well. And I have. I have respect for people who can do it well. At one time, I did have. Not what I would call portraits, but I would say were images of the store owner in the edit for the book. They were all very mysterious and sort of elusive photographs where you never really saw the person. You might see them from an angle or from behind or somewhat hidden, you know, looking through. Across the store, through the shelves and seeing them there. And the reason for that, I guess there maybe There might be a few reasons for that. First of all, I don't find it easy to make great pictures of people. It's really not my thing. Secondly, and I think more importantly, I liked the idea of there being the knowledge of. And a presence of the store owner, you know, as a character. Obviously, if there's a store, there's. There's a store keeper or a store owner. But by having that figure or that character remaining a mystery, sort of undefined in a way, I liked the idea of it being this sort of hazy gray area where maybe one's mind could drift into. Who is this? Or who could this be? Is it Christian? Is it? I like the idea of there being some easy confusion or conflation of the maker and the subject, or the artist and the store owner. So anyway, that was something that I was really intrigued with. I thought it could be an effective sort of approach or device to confusing ownership and authorship in a way that would actually open up the work to other potential experiences or interpretations. And I liked that. And I held onto that for a long time. And at one of many different stages in the process of editing the book, I thought, well, I'll just. I'm just going to try to see. I'm going to try and see what it feels like if I pull all those images out. I don't like the idea. I think I have something here. I like the idea of there being this conflation of things, but I'm just going to try it. And when I did that, I was surprised at how effective that was, or it felt to me the store was still there. The imagination of. Or the idea of a store owner still seemed like it was there. And in a way, some of the things that you see in the book, let's say, like the monoprints or. Or some of the nearly invisible handwriting that appears on the surfaces of some of the pages. That could also create some interesting questions as to where it comes from. But when I took the images of the store owner out, I was surprised at how effectively it pulled me forward in the work. In a way.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, that's exactly what I was. I was just thinking. It's like when you took them out, you were able to insert yourself in a way that I don't think would have been possible otherwise.
I mean, obviously, I'm already there. It's gone. Code by Christian Patterson. We all know this, but we also have the photographs of these disembodied, dirty hands holding objects. And we don't know whose hands they are. So that's another opportunity there for that imagination. And the first, I guess, pretty much on the same subject, but thinking about things in a slightly different way. The first piece of what I refer to as the Marginalia in the book, just past the fly leaf, it says, to open a shop is easy, to keep it open as an art. And that phrase, I think, effectively introduces the work in its own way or one way of thinking about it. And again, it's the conflation of a shop or a business and an art. And when it says to keep it open, that then transitions very easily into the more existential themes and the idea of life and death and survival. And then later on, you see a picture of a sign on the front door of the store that says going out of business, which, again, is a very effective allusion to the same themes.
I know that you have had multiple exhibitions in your life, including this work, and one thing that I found incredibly fascinating was that you actually did an exhibit of this work very early on in the process. I think it was in 2016, way before the project was finished, and I got to see some installation shots of that, and it really looked amazing. I also got to see your notes on what you would change from that, which was really fascinating. But I want to ask you. So that was almost a disclaimer to my question, but I want to ask you, do you feel like these days, with fewer and fewer exhibition opportunities in the world for photography, that there is an urgency there for the photo book to have an interactive aspect to it, which I think your books really do, particularly Bottom of the Lake, which we didn't even get to talk about. But do you think about that, or is it just the way you work? And so be it.
Definitely more the latter than the former. It's just the way I work. The book and the exhibition are both their own experiences. And I feel like I have every reason to, every compulsion to just make the most of them. The exhibition that you mentioned in 2016, it was, I don't know, a bit of a circumstance, or I think I could even say obligation. At the same time, I could say it was a great opportunity. But what happened was that in 2015, I was awarded what's called the Grand Prix, the Grand Prize from Image Vevey in Vevey, Switzerland. Every two years they have this festival, they have this biennial. It's a photography and video in this beautiful little town on the shores of Lake Geneva. And, yeah, every two years they present that award, and then every other two Years in between, they host this festival. But in exchange for receiving this prize and the money awarded, I was obligated to have an exhibition of the work that was being recognized and supported. And that didn't necessarily. That didn't really send me into a panic. I knew that I wouldn't be done with Gonko by then. But we made the most of it and it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to experiment and to try a few different things. And as the exhibition or the installation images that you've. And the notes that you've seen, very few people have seen the installation images and even fewer have seen the notes on what I would change.
But I won't tell anyone.
Yeah, it was a great opportunity. I was very happy with the way that it turned out. I mean, I could briefly describe it. It was a very large exhibition in a disused space in Switzerland and there were three rooms. The first featured photographs of that I had made outside the store and in the town and its environs. Then you enter the second room, which is really the heart of the exhibition, through the original screen door that I had taken from the store and you walk into this room which is. It's an immersive installation and an attempt, I guess you could say, at recreating the store and in its environment, utilizing again, the original screen front door. The screen door, the original green Formica checkout counter.
You shipped over 1500.
Yeah, there were artifacts to Switzerland, objects and artifacts and products and some things.
1500?
Yeah, which is not all of what I have. I mean, you should see my studio, but I have quite a large number of things from the store. Of course, shipping them over to Switzerland, that was a logistical nightmare, an ordeal because we had to empty a lot of the things that were being shipped and we're cracking open 30 to 40 year old tin cans of stuff and dumping it basically in full hazmat gear and then staging everything on shelves in the space in Switzerland and in some cases refilling the, you know, the clear glass bottles and jars with material that resembled what had originally been in inside.
And you brought over a scenic painter, I think.
Yes. I met someone who works as a scenic painter and a faux finisher in the theater industry here in New York City. I shared some early photographs of Gonko with them and asked first of all, that they helped me to create some smaller scale surfaces or flats that I could use in the studio to continue to shoot the products and make still lifes here in my studio in New York City when I wasn't in or Couldn't be in Mississippi. And so I have a pink wall, a green wall, a drippy paint wall. I have these old wooden surfaces that have fake staining and rust marks on them from tin cans. And that turned out to be a huge. I was so thankful for having done that when the pandemic began, because here I was stuck in my studio in New York, not able to get to the store, and I could continue to make photographs.
Yeah, it's really fortuitous. Yeah.
I just love. You know, it all started with Redheaded Peckerwood, really. But I just love the process, the traveling back and forth between fact and fiction and the authentic artifact or a remake or a facsimile of something. And of course, it's all done with a view to making good work or telling a good story. But I do get some fun and some satisfaction from being successful in doing that and fooling the viewer. It's. It's fun.
By the way, it sounds like your studio is also becoming a bit of a museum.
It is. Between the. Between Gonko and the various other projects that I've either made or hope to make. I'm a collector. Yeah, you should. You can visit someday. I would like to.
Oh, my gosh, that would be great.
Yeah.
Your studio is now a place where you could. You could give a tour, right?
Yeah, sure.
And over here we have the Gongo recreated shelf from aisle four.
Yeah. So I hope to eventually have the opportunity to where I've ultimately ended up with Gonko and how it might be presented or how I hope to be able to present it as an exhibition or an installation is really to do both. And I think it's really interesting to think of having a more traditional exhibition. Photographic prints, things on the wall, maybe a few plinths or something like that, whatever it calls for, but basically the work. And then to have a separate, discrete space that is either it could be on the opposite side of a wall, or it could be within walking distance, but to have this immersive installation that recreates the space and doesn't involve photography at all. But it's just another way of experiencing the same place, not through images, but through. Just by being there. Something interesting can happen with having the opportunity to see the same place or have the same idea of the place seen in these different ways.
Oh, of course. Absolutely. Let me ask you one last question, and then we. We have to wrap up. I know that Redheaded Peckerwood took approximately five years. And Gonko. I know it's hard to say took, because you Weren't working on it the whole time, but from beginning to end it was a project that was developed over a 20 year period. I'm a big believer in taking your time and not rushing. I think the art world has a way of pressuring people to feel that they need to move too quickly. And that really bothers me.
Yes.
And as folks who know me well know, one of the reasons I closed down my gallery, the physical space that was open to the public, was because I felt that it put an unnatural pressure on my artists to exhibit every two years. Everyone always thought they had to exhibit every two years. And I felt like everyone was rushing their projects and I participate in that. Yeah. And I. It was just. It gave me just terrible anxiety and didn't want to be involved with that.
So I'm so glad to hear you saying that. The art world is extremely. Yeah, it's a, it's a capitalistic enterprise and obviously we're all in the business for different reasons. But boy, I couldn't agree with you more. Good work takes time. Good work doesn't have a sell by or expiration date. I mean, I guess that ties in nicely with Gonk, some of the products on the shelf. But yeah, you're only going to make the work once. You're probably only going to publish the book once. Take your time, do it, do it well, or as best as you can.
100%.
Oh my gosh. The fickle nature also of the art world and the constant obsession with what's next is just so tiresome.
I concur. Just do your work, people, and don't worry about what the monster art world is doing. So let me just ask you quickly, during those periods, I'm sure at times you feel some anxiety about are you getting there? Is it, where is the project? How's it going? How do you deal with those feelings when they come up? Or do you just feel really. Maybe you feel really comfortable in the stretch and you're all right with it? Just a little wisdom for the listeners.
Good question. I'm glad you asked it because I struggled with this work more than anything I've ever worked on. It was a very long period of time with many personal ups and downs, with many creative ups and downs and really probably the lowest lows that I've ever gone through in both regards. And I've tried to include some of that or allude to some of that in the work. I mean, again, it's very easy for me to relate to the store and what was happening there because there were times when I felt very much like it was happening to me. And that comes through, I think, again, not only in the photographs or perhaps some of the monoprints and the things that they say, maybe even some of the marginalia and some of the, you know, those cryptic words and phrases. It all depends on the viewer and what they read and what they might think. But then in the dust jacket, when you open the dust jacket, there's this Basically this roughly 20 by 30 inch collage or scattering of visual material, debris and ephemera, most of it from the store, but it also includes some things that I've sprinkled in myself as a way of, I guess, trying to carefully or gently include some of these thoughts or themes, not really being too instructive or heavy handed. I mean, there is no, there is no text in the book. There's. I mean, there's no. There's no essay, right?
There's no essay. There's plenty of text.
Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of text. But one of the, one of the elements that I've included there are these pages that are torn out of self help books from the time period. I mean, I was having some of these thoughts myself, but I wanted, of course, I wanted to be accurate to the work. And so I found these self help books from the 1970s that touch on crisis and fear and procrastination. And I think these are things that most, if not all artists, I think all artists struggle with at one time or another. It's never talked about or it's very rarely talked about, but. And the funny thing is, again, I just. I just think it. It really weaves in really well with Gonko and what was happening there in terms of time and age and these more existential themes I don't have. I think you ended your question with hinting at the possibility of sharing some wisdom. And.
But I think the wisdom. Let me just let you off the hook. I think the wisdom is for people to know that everyone goes through these difficulties, that this is universal. I mean, you hear all the time from people, whether it's composers or actors or whoever, you know, the idea of what we call imposter syndrome. And, you know, I think artists really struggle with this. And the truth is we're all struggling with it all the time. You know, it's part of being a human being. Unless you are. You know, there are obviously exceptions to that, but for the most part, I think the most emotionally balanced people actually experience that. It's, you know, a very human thing. So I just. I think it's good for people to just realize that. That it is part of the process and it's just impossible to. Almost impossible, I should say, to divorce from the process or to somehow bypass.
Yeah. It's something that, in the end, of course, I can look back on it all and think that it was something that I had to go through. And by going through it, I came out on the other side with this.
Well, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Christian, thank you so much for spending time with me today and with folks out there who will eventually get to hear this conversation. It's been a real. Just joy to speak with you after all these years of knowing your work and really admiring your artistry. It's really an honor to spend time with you. So thank you.
Oh, I appreciate hearing such kind words from you. Thank you so much.
I look forward to meeting you in your studio someday for that tour. So I'll take you up on that.
Please do. Let's do that.
Okay. Very good. Well, thank you, Christian. And take care of yourself. Be well.
You too.
Okay.
Photo Work with Sasha Wolf is a production of Photowork Foundation. Executive producer is Sasha Wolf and the associate producer is Taylor Selzbach. The show is also produced and edited by me, Michael Chovendalt in a real photo show. Music is by J. Walter Hawks. If you like the show and wish to find out more about the foundation, please visit PhotoArk foundation and be sure to subscribe and review with all the stars on your listening platform.