Gong Co.
Christian Patterson
Gong Co. is about a closed Chinese grocery store in the Mississippi Delta whose shelves remained stocked with decades-old products.
Christian Patterson (born 1972) is an American photographer, born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and lives in New York. Patterson is the author of four books of which, his now-classic photobook, Redheaded Peckerwood is best known. This project is loosely inspired by the late 1950s kiling spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Anne Fugate across Nebraska. The book was published in 2011 and won the 2012 Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Award. It is also introduced in The Photobook: A History, Volume 3. His latest book is Gong Co.
When Christian Patterson first encountered the store in 2003, it was still open for business. Its shelves scattered with long-expired products. An unintentional time capsule. Over the next twenty years, Patterson documented the store’s disintegration, through its decline, death and decay. In 2013, its doors were closed, with its contents left inside. Late 2019 it was gutted. Gong Co. documents that single small town store.
The book is presented as an aged and worn green, clothbound cover wrapped in a brown paper jacket resembling a grocery sack. Its pages are seemingly foxed and molded. The inside flaps of the jacket show a comprehesive list of the things on offer at the store. The book looks and feels like something old and well-used. Even though it isn’t. Some pages have ever so faint inscriptions, barely legible.
Gong Co. is about the impermanence of it all. What we see is decay. The disappearance of the small town store and the products it sold. Urbanization and the disappearance of small towns. It’s hard not to see it as a metaphor for the United States or even Western Europe. It are countries in decline. It’s not surprising that especially in these countries politicians are emerging who refer to a glorious past and say they want to make the country great again.
Gong Co.
Photographer: Christian Patterson
Published in 2024
Copublished by TBW Books and Éditions Images Vevey
Casebound hardcover with French fold dust jacket
23 x 28 cm, 224 pages, 164 color plates
Chosen by people immersed in the photobook world as one of their favorite photobooks of 2024