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Gong Co. by Christian Patterson.
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Photographs by Christian Patterson
TBW Books & Éditions Images Vevey, 2024. 224 pp., 164 color plates, 9x11".
Photography has a Vishnu complex. While regular folks are blithely content to let people and moments fade into the past, photographers want to preserve them. That urge kicks into high gear when destruction looms. Raise your hand if you’ve ever photographed an old building scheduled for demolition, a patch of nature before development into a subdivision, a rusting antique car, or birthday candles about to be blown out. To photograph is to freeze time, locking the present into the historical record. We capture reality like a bug trapped in amber. Vishnu (The “Preserver” in Hinduism) would approve.
For photographer Christian Patterson, the amber bug bit hard on a 2003 road trip through the Mississippi Delta. During a short stop in the small town of Merigold, an old brick building stirred his curiosity. It housed a family-owned store with the name painted on the side in all-caps: THE GONG CO. Patterson took some photographs and made a mental note of the location. Over the next several years he returned multiple times to poke around and take more pictures. Each visit, he found the store in worse shape than before. Its shelves stored a dusty museum of old merchandise. Did it actually sell anything? Who knew. Eventually, on a stop in 2013, he found the business closed for good. By that point Patterson had arranged private access through the owner. He continued to photograph in and around The Gong Co. until 2019 when the interior was finally gutted.
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After a few years of editing, sequencing, and production tweaks, Patterson has released his findings as a photo monograph. Gong Co.’s co-publishers TBW and Éditions Images Vevey describe it as “a monumental memento mori to the decline and decay of a family-owned grocery store.” That’s a fair portrayal. But there’s a fine line between memento mori and ruin porn, as Patterson would be the first to admit. His shopworn photographs hang somewhere in the balance between the two poles, a precarious stance which lends them visual punch.
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Before seeing any photos, Gong Co. puts the reader in a bygone mood with clever design features. For starters, the dust jacket has the texture and color of a brown paper sack. The simulacrum effect is enhanced with faux grocery stickers, masking tape, and a grimy hand print. Pulling back the jacket’s exterior folds — adorned with phrases like “Perishable”, “1978”, and “Going Out Of Business” — we uncover photos of stock items from yesteryear’s retail world, amid warnings about procrastination. Images of an air freshener, old-school pull tab, and fly swatter cast a swampy Delta spell. The book’s outer cover plays along. It’s a clothbound green facsimile, seemingly sun faded, thread worn and dog-eared. The endpapers recycle a floral pattern which recalls fifties wallpaper. By all initial appearances Gong Co. could pass for an ancient tome on a neglected bookshelf somewhere, perhaps in a small-town Mississippi shop?
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Once past the end pages, the photos begin in earnest, and they continue without letup until the coda. Their sequence follows Patterson’s twenty year path of discovery in bite-sized frames, gradually penetrating from the store’s exterior into its private innards. A rear index charts the trajectory with helpful captions (a good page to study before diving into the photos). Image by image we trace Patterson’s investigations from Highway 61 to Merigold’s town streets, then further into the store’s main space, back rooms, office, and the owner’s home before, inexorably, Gong Co. is finally Going, Going, Gone.
Patterson’s visual style is neutral throughout. It’s a lazy day in the Delta. He’s in no hurry. He can’t quite decide if he should share his secret discovery in broad chunks, or compose it into abstract compositions. Most photos fall into one camp or the other, some into both. For general context, a handful of sweeping interior views of The Gong Co.’s inventory are very helpful. They’re photographed in turn facing N, S, E, and W. The place is a wreck. Peeling paint, displaced products, and debris-strewn aisles signal years of inattention.
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Patterson spices these broad views with dozens of closely cropped subjects. Some photos isolate consumer goods and signs, recalling the odd artifactual interjections of Redheaded Peckerwood. Others take a more symbolic approach, blending shadow, shape, and color into visual chiaroscuros. We sense the eerie presence of humans throughout, but it’s subtle. Surely someone must have built and cared for this place at one point. But no actual people appear in the book apart from a few modeled hands. Despite the bright tonality of the book’s coated images, their take-home message is clear. The Gong Co. is a forlorn and forgotten backwater indeed.
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If this were just another photobook of decrepit shop scenes — old barn photos, anyone? — I might be tempted to dismiss it as ruin porn and move on. What makes Gong Co. noteworthy is its novel design. In fact, few photobooks can match Gong Co.’s memento mori artifice. I’ve already described the dated cover features, but the main body of the book takes nostalgic homage to another level entirely. The interior pages are speckled with pre-imposed stains, smudge marks, and penciled notes. Some of them whisper “Mystery…” or “To open a store is easy…” The blemishes are faint at first, almost invisible. But they become more pronounced as the book progresses. Fake grease stains seep through multiple sections, a perfect semblance of maltreatment. Spill a few drops of beer on this book? No problem. They’ll blend right in. Feel free to handle with oiled palms too. When Gong Co. is viewed sideways, the spatterings present themselves in force. The page edges are mildewed with browning age marks, as if it was left in a damp place and forgotten a while. For a book about a fading institution, there is no better way to drive the point home.
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This isn’t the first time that Patterson has pushed the photobook envelope, nor will it likely be the last. Redheaded Peckerwood broke open the multifarious dam on a generation of photo monographs, while Bottom of the Lake modeled itself after an old phone book. Both were innovative, but Gong Co. might be his most convincing trick yet. I’ve paged through it several times, and I can’t find a weakness in its senescent illusion. It looks, feels, and acts like an aging book. If only it had a mildewed smell, the ruse would be complete. Such a trait might be beyond publishing capability, at least for now. But who knows what the future holds. As Gong Co. proves, the passing of time can unlock many mysteries.
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