Christian Patterson: Going Out of Business
Christian Patterson’s book “Gong Co.” is a haunting yet nostalgic documentation of the gradual decline of a family-owned grocery store in the Mississippi Delta.
The photographer first walked into the store in 2003, when it still operated but appeared frozen in time. Over the next two decades, he photographed its deterioration by immortalizing its objects, walls, signs and posters in a series of detailed still lives, before it was emptied in 2019.
The book seems to evoke Andy Warhol’s prophecy that “Someday, all department stores will become museums, and all museums will become department stores.” Rooted in the atmosphere of the American South, it encapsulates the transformation of everyday objects into art, evoking a range of artists like Marcel Duchamp, William Egglestone and Walker Evans.
