Kristine Potter: Dark Waters

Dark Waters, Kristine Potter’s second monograph, continues her engagement with the American landscape as a palimpsest for cultural ideologies.  In this dark and brooding series, Potter reflects on the Southern Gothic landscape as evoked in the popular imagination of “murder ballads” from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her seductive, richly detailed black-and-white images channel the setting and characters of these songs, capturing the landscape of the American South, and creating a series of evocative portraits that stand in for the oft-unnamed women at the center of their stories.  In the American murder ballad, which has taken on cult appeal and continue to be rerecorded even to this day, the riverscape is frequently the stage of crimes as described in their lyrics. Places like Murder Creek, Bloody Fork, and Deadman’s Pond are haunted by both the victim and perpetrator of violence in the world Potter conjures, reflecting the casual and popular glamorization of violence against women that remains prevalent in today’s cultural landscape. As Potter notes, “I see a through line of violent exhibitionism from those early murder ballads, to the Wild West shows, to the contemporary landscape of cinema and television. Culturally, we seem to require it.” Dark Waters both evokes and exorcises the sense of threat and foreboding that women often grapple with as they move through the world. Author Rebecca Bengal contributes an evocative short story that underscores the sense of anxiety and foreboding that Potter infuses into each of her images; a deliciously compelling, if chilling, combination. Copublished by Aperture with Images Vevey and The Momentary

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 136
Number of images: 63
Publication date: 2023-07-11
Measurements: 10.25 x 11.5 x 1 inches
ISBN: 9781597115568

“Again and again, her photographs capture both the isolation and the beauty of the rural South.”—Margaret Renkl, The New York Times

“Through texture, thoughtful composition, and pensive portraits, Potter’s work contends with the sense of ever-present danger that women often experience as they move through the world.”—Isadora Pennington, RoughDraft Atlanta

“Dark Waters is a darkly beautiful book, the deep, rich monochrome tones in perfect sync with the subject matter…A haunting short story, Blood Harmony, by the American writer Rebecca Bengal, complements the deep sense of place and heightened atmosphere of the photographs.” —Sean O’Hagan, The Observer

“While the ballads create an affecting emotional ether around the pictures, the book trusts the viewer to make further connections. The result is a haunting, empowering visual experience steeped in literary and musical traditions.” —Lauren Turner, Chapter 16

“In Potter’s richly layered and noirish photographs, we are confronted with those haunted sites with titles like Troublesome Creek, Hangman’s Curve, Bloody Fork, and Murder Creek 1.”—Kira von Eichel, Oprah Daily

Kristine Potter (born in Dallas, 1977) is an artist based in Nashville. She holds a BFA in photography; a BA in art history from the University of Georgia; and an MFA in photography from Yale University. In 2021, her work was included in But Still, It Turns, an exhibition (and book) curated by Paul Graham that launched at the International Center of Photography, New York, before traveling to the Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, in 2022. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2018) and the Grand Prix Images Vevey (2019–20). Manifest, her first monograph, was published in 2018. Potter is currently an assistant professor of photography at Middle Tennessee State University.
Rebecca Bengal is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, currently based in Brooklyn. She is a MacDowell fellowship recipient, a contributing editor at Oxford American, and a past editor at DoubleTake, American Short Fiction, the Onion, and Vogue.com. Her stories, interviews, essays, reported pieces, and collaborations with artists have been published by Aperture, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review. Bengal’s first collection of essays, Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists, is forthcoming from Aperture in 2023.