“Is despair an excellence or a defect? Purely dialectically, it is both. The possibility of this sickness is man’s superiority over the animal, for it indicates infinite sublimity that he is spirit. Consequently, to be able to despair is an infinite advantage, and yet to be in despair is not only the worst misfortune and misery—no, it is ruination.”
- Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

My girl made this picture as we crossed the Causeway after a visit to Percy’s old hometown, Covington, La., this afternoon. It was a perfect day, and it looks like Walker might have been shining down on us.

Christian Patterson, Tree On Fire, fts OUT THERE, 2009

Over a seemingly random series of links and sites I came across an interview from MakingRoom Magazine with Ross Evertson and the great Christian Patterson. They discuss Patterson’s recent project, OUT THERE, a series of photographs based on the story of murders in Nebraska, a la Capote’s In Cold Blood.

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.

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.

The guy really gets it. He’s one of my favorites.

back in new orleans and couldnt be happier…