Christian Patterson (born 1972, in
Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, U.S.) is an American
photographer known for his Sound Affects and Redheaded Peckerwood series which have received solo exhibitions and been published as books. Redheaded Peckerwood was awarded the
Rencontres d'Arles Author Book Award in 2012[2] and Patterson has been awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship[3] and the Vevey International Photography Award.[4]
Biography
In 2002, Patterson moved from
Brooklyn, New York to
Memphis, Tennessee to work with the photographer
William Eggleston.[5][6] In 2005, he completed his first project, Sound Affects, a collection of color photographs that explore Memphis as a visual and musical place, and use light and color as visual analogues to sound and music. In 2008, a Sound Affects book was published by Edition Kaune, Sudendorf.
Also in 2005, Patterson began working on his second project, Redheaded Peckerwood, which is loosely inspired by the late 1950s killing spree of
Charles Starkweather and
Caril Ann Fugate across Nebraska. Photographs are the heart of this work, but they are complemented and informed by documents and objects[vague] that belonged to the killers and their victims. Later that year, Patterson moved back to New York.
In 2011, a Redheaded Peckerwood book was published by
Mack and named one of the best photobooks of the year by many critics.[7] The book was nominated for the 2012 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards[8] and won the 2012 Recontres d'Arles Author Book Award.[2] It is introduced in The Photobook: A History, Vol. 3, edited by
Gerry Badger and
Martin Parr.[9]
In 2015, Patterson completed Bottom of the Lake, a project revisiting his hometown of
Fond du Lac, Wisconsin (French for "Bottom of the Lake"). A book was published by Koenig Books and takes the form of a facsimile of the artist's family's 1973 telephone book from Fond du Lac, with Patterson's own photographs, drawings and notes inserted. Like Redheaded Peckerwood, this new work mixes large-format colour landscapes, black-and-white snapshots, appropriated and manipulated archival images, and studio still lifes. As an installation and exhibition, the work includes an interactive rotary telephone object and wooden sculpture.
Publications
By Patterson
Sound Affects. Cologne: Edition Kaune, Sudendorf, 2008.
ISBN9783000245145.
Redheaded Peckerwood.
Self-published, 2010.
Mack version. Essays by
Lucy Sante and Karen Irvine. Includes three inserts, an illustrated booklet and (in the third edition) a facsimile postcard.
AP CP BL – Ahorn Paper 1, Christian Patterson, Bottom of the Lake. Berlin: Ahorn Books, 2016.
ISBN978-3-946707-00-4. Contains two interviews with Patterson and contributions by
Gerry Badger, Thomas Weski, and
Lucy Sante. 144 pages.
Solo exhibitions
2003: Another Time, Another Place, and You, Southside Gallery, Oxford, MS.[13]
2005: Sound Affects, Power House, Memphis, TN;[14] Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY, 2006;[15] Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2007;[16] Kaune-Sudendorf Contemporary, Cologne, Germany, 2008[citation needed]
2015: 2015–2016
Vevey International Photography Award, Vevey, Switzerland. A grant of CHF 40,000 (around USD 42,000) to realize his project Gong Co, about a closed Chinese grocery store in the
Mississippi Delta whose shelves remained stocked with decades-old products.[4]
References
Notes
^Although the
ISBN has remained the same, Patterson made changes from the first edition to the second, and from the second to the third. "The changes in the editions of Redheaded Peckerwood are small enough to argue for either static or evolving photobooks".[10]
Citations
^"Bio & CV". Christian Patterson. Retrieved September 9, 2014.