Christian Patterson Interview

by Ross Evertson

MakingRoom: How did you come across—and begin—this project?

Christian Patterson: The process that led to my idea for this project started years ago, when I first watched Terrance Malick's film Badlands. Malick's cinematography was awe-inspiring. The landscape and sky were luminous, painterly, romantic and endless. The actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek portrayed a blank, dumb, young couple in love, killing anyone that got in their way. It was a tragic story, but a beautiful movie. It was eerily romantic.

I decided to research the making of the movie, the filming locations, etc. It was then that I discovered that Malick's script was loosely based on the story of Charles Starkweather, a 19-year-old kid from Lincoln, Nebraska who killed his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate's family. Starkweather and Fugate fled Lincoln and drove across the entire state of Nebraska before being captured as they approached the mountains of Wyoming. At the end of it all, Starkweather killed ten people in three days.

After much research and verification of some of the locations of events in the Starkweather story, I set out on the road, retracing Charlie and Caril Ann’s path, using their story as a roadmap for my own travels across Nebraska. In addition to being a photographer, I had to become a bit of a detective. I was surprised by what I found.

I have long been fascinated with and inspired by phantom events—events that have little or no physical presence in a place or an image but have a very strong relationship with the place that is photographed. The resulting images focus on the quiet, spatial context and emotional energy of a place. I feel that these images exhibit a certain otherness—a sense of what was, or what could have been.

I discovered the title "Out There" while reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which recounts the story of a different series of murders on the Great Plains in 1959. Capote was referring to the remote, empty landscape of the Great Plains. In Starkweather’s case, "out there" might refer to a psychological, emotional state. In my personal experience as an artist, I've also found it a fitting description for a meditative, immersive, perceptual state of mind.

MR: While working on this project, do you feel that sort of connection? While you obviously have a slightly more concrete idea of where you're headed, you are pushing your way through the landscape just as they did. Does the "spree" mentality have any effect on the photographs you are making?

CP: I have found myself thinking most about the emotional, personal, human side of the story.

There are at least two different types of observations and photographs that I am making. There are certain situations, subjects and viewpoints that I feel are active inspections—they have an almost forensic feeling. And then there are landscapes and other scenes that I feel are quiet, contemplative observations—they have a more poetic feeling.

I have remained mindful of Starkweather and Fugate's story while I travel through the same Nebraska landscape. I have thought about what must have been going through their minds, being young and in love, having committed the murders, and being on the run, not knowing where they were going, or if they would get there.

I thought about these things as I drove through the big, flat and empty Nebraska plains, along the rural two-lane roads, rolling atop the Sandhills, and finally nearing the mountains of Wyoming. This landscape lends itself very well to the heavy themes of the story—the isolation, panic and fear, and the loss of innocence.

I have come to realize that this is a beautiful landscape, but not necessarily an innocent one.

MR: How do you resolve the research you've done with the emotional side? And how do you approach the process of editing a project that is an artistic reaction to something that can't really be documented?

When I got to Lincoln, Nebraska, my research became more personal and emotional. The Starkweather story remains one of the biggest news stories in Nebraska state history. It is local legend. Most of the people that I met in Lincoln were very familiar with the story. Many of them knew someone connected with the story or had stories of their own to tell.

I visited the Nebraska State Historical Society. I read newspaper articles and court documents. I flipped through Caril Ann Fugate's photo diary. I also found the contents of victim Robert Jensen's wallet—shopping lists, receipts, dirty limericks and a poem. I saw crime scene photographs. I even held the murder weapons. These were all very startling, emotional experiences.

When I started following my map, I found things that I never imagined I would find nearly fifty years after the murders took place. There are very few things that remain, and they are very hard to find, but I found some very interesting things that will show up in the photographs. My research and imagination are helping me to fill in the blanks.

MR: There are other examples of photographic projects covering stories "after the fact". Joel Sternfeld's On This Site comes to mind, but his is a much more deadpan approach. Were you looking at other related bodies of work, or was the process more introverted?

CP: My process is internal. I have always had a fascination with the relationship between past and present, the history of things, and the lingering presence that history often lends to place. I am also fascinated with things that you cannot see in a photograph, but you may know or feel are there.

I would not say that my work only deals with things "after the fact," because I personally feel a lingering presence in many of the images, before and after the photograph is made.

In a somewhat similar way, my first project Sound Affects had a strong relationship to music, the places where it was created or heard, where it reverberates and travels, and the ways that light is similar to sound, or can illustrate the qualities of sound. I enjoyed the challenge of using light to portray the qualities of sound.

This project is an active engagement with the landscape and my surroundings. I do not want to just photograph "the scene of the crime," I also want to photograph the things that exist before and after the fact, or are even only imagined or dreamed.

MR: When we talked before we discussed a bit about the nature of presenting this work (and indeed work in general) to an audience. In relation to Out There or just presenting photographic projects in general, how do you think one figures out where to land in between being overly didactic and too aloof?

CP: The photographs need to speak for themselves as much as possible. Whether or not there is an actual story behind the photographs, they need to stand on their own as images. My inclusion of some of the non-photographic items—the notes and letters, among other things—is meant to provide a few narrative clues, or thought-process starting points. They are also fascinating documents in themselves.

MR: When you are working on a project seems to be finding your own way through an existing story, how, exactly, do you know when you're done?

CP: This project found its initial inspiration from an existing story that includes some very heavy themes, and this is providing me with a lot of room for my own creative interpretation.

My interest in this project continues, because I am still finding new things and new ways to approach them. "The end" will just feel right, in terms of the overall projects, its images, and their balance. I plan to revisit Nebraska this winter. I am getting closer...

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Christian Patterson is currently based in New York, NY. For more information, check christianpatterson.com