200 Days, 200 Photo Books
Christian Patterson: Redheaded Peckerwood
MACK Books, London, 2011
“‘Redheaded Peckerwood’ by Christian Patterson is a series of photographs, documents and objects with a tragic underlying narrative – the story of two teenage lovers who murdered ten people during a three-day killing spree across Nebraska more than 50 years ago in 1958. The real story of Charles Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate was also made into two movies, ‘Badlands’ by Terrence Malick in 1973 and ‘Natural Born Killers’ by Oliver Stone in 1994 and is deeply encoded in the American collective memory. Christian Patterson follows the route that the two teenagers took, documenting actual crime scenes but also found footage along the way, making the story travel through time by means of a ‘subjective documentation’: ‘My work includes documentary images and those made through forensic study, archival appropriation, reenactment and staging, challenging notions of truth and representation by mixing fact and fiction, and fragmenting the narrative of this true crime story. Photographs are the heart of this work but they are complemented and informed by materials that belonged to the killers and victims. Redheaded Peckerwood is a visual crime dossier filled with cues and clues – a mystery to be solved.’ (Christian Patterson)
Christian Patterson, born 1974 in Fond du Lac, Wyoming, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Upon its publication, ‘Redheaded Peckerwood’ has received wide spread media attention and has been listed among the ‘Best Photobooks of 2011′ by numerous critics and publications, including the New York Times, Le Monde and The Guardian, often times listed in the top rank. The frist edition of the book is already sold out, but a second print run is now available.
