Murder Ballads And Southern Photography From Kristine Potter

Beautiful and terrible.

These murder ballads.

Like the region they emanate from.

The Momentary in Bentonville, AR exhibits “Kristine Potter: Dark Waters,” richly detailed black-and-white photographs inspired by the enigmatic terrain surrounding bodies of water bearing the names of violence in the American South. Places like “Murder Creek,” “Deadman’s Branch,” and “Bloody Fork.”

Threaded throughout the series of photographs are Potter’s references to murder ballads–a genre of traditional folk songs in which women are often menaced or killed by men in rivers and forests. That’s how the presentation begins. Visitors enter a darkened space and watch a video recalling an open mic night where Nashville-based musician friends of Potter’s (b. 1977; Dallas) howl out the mournful tunes.

Like “Banks of the Ohio” with lyrics including:

I held a knife against her breast

As into my arms she pressed

She said Willie, don’t you murder me

I’m unprepared for eternity

These songs have become a backing track for the South to many, tinting the way people perceive the region. Violence against women as a feature of cultural consumption.

Sit with them. Listen to the words. Then move on to Potter’s photographs.

The Photographs

The pictures land differently after listening to the songs. Go swimming in the ocean after having watched “The Little Mermaid” and then do the same after watching “Jaws” and you’ll get the picture.

They also land differently for women than men. Murder ballads aren’t about women killing men.

“When (Potter) was taking some of these photographs, she talked about her experience walking through these woods into these bodies of water and having these nerve wracking feelings that she would turn the corner and run into something or someone, and she recognized that wasn't quite a rational feeling, but it was a feeling she couldn't escape,” Elise Raborg, curatorial associate of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary, told Forbes.com. “When she turned to walk to her car, she felt like she had to walk at a brisk pace, and she was exploring what caused that.”

Potter, who orchestrated the hanging of her photographs in the exhibition, attempted to replicate that sensation in how the galleries ebb and flow.

“She's setting up these moments where you can step into the shoes, the perspective of these women,” Raborg explains. “(Potter) adjusted the height of these hangs. It gives you this sensation of actually being immersed in the landscape; are you laying on the ground looking up at the canopy or are you about to be thrown in the turbulent water? It gives you this uneasy sense.”

Walking through the exhibition alone, looking over your shoulder, as if walking through the woods alone. Anxious if not outright fearful.

The photos, however, are neutral. It’s the music and history that puts these vibes on otherwise benign landscapes.

Water.

Water conceals–bodies, histories?

So can woods.

“The whole show is playing off of this, that when we go to the South and we think about this space, it has a very particular history associated with it,” Alejo Benedetti, curator of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary, told Forbes.com. “There's a mythos built into the landscape (and) when you are in (the exhibition), you're feeling some of that.”

A cello plays an eerie bass note interspersed with voices and claps augmenting “Dark Waters’” foreboding mood.

The Women

Potter’s portraits reflect the experience of young women who occupy a realm of constant vigilance and exposed fragility. Beauty, allure, and peril.

Set up by the murder ballads, the photographs of woods and water play tricks on the mind. So do the women.

Are they contemporary? Historic?

The continuing appeal murder ballads, the domestic violence statistics, prove there’s no difference in some ways.

Timely. Timeless.

Potter is often questioned why she puts her subjects in period specific dress. She doesn’t. The only instructions she gives models–selected from her Nashville circle of friends–is to wear lighter colors because she’s shooting against a dark background and not to wear anything with visible labels or logos.

What they’re photographed in is what they show up wearing.

“Some of this may be because thrifting is big, but she's not trying to hide anything,” Benedetti explains. “(One) woman has a nose ring, so it's not like she's trying to set up this moment where it's specifically in the past. There's no desire there, but it is really telling of all of us when we see (these women) and we immediately stick it in a particular moment in time. We often do this with the South, period. We hear the banjo and we think this is a very particular moment in time. The show plays with that.”

Many of Potter’s photographs read as snapshots, as if there’s more to see than meets the eye just out of frame–or just out of time.

“Moments throughout these works sometimes feel almost cinematic in the way that they're photographed, and you will catch (photographs) that feel like, ‘oh, I've just happened across some moment in time.’ There's a story that's happening here. I don't have all the nuances or all the details of that story,” Benedetti said. “You're not going get all those, but you can start to see as these (pictures) are working together, how we are getting pieces and parts of that story and it feels like (Potter’s) setting that up for us, and to a degree, she is, she's not trying to give us answers, but she is trying to set the stage with these works.”

The South

Potter’s photographs neither honor nor dishonor the South. Or perhaps they do both.

Louisiana and Florida.

Yes. And No.

Alabama and Kentucky.

Yes and no.

Tennessee, too.

“(The photographs are) not exclusively focused on one specific place because when we're talking about ‘the South,’ we're talking about this amorphous idea of a place, and it's almost impossible to separate this mystique of the South–for good or bad–from the place, and that is really critical to the work that (Potter’s) making,” Benedetti said. “Some of these photos, as you're walking through (the exhibition), you're thinking I could walk right out in the Ozark woods, it feels familiar.”

Right outside.

Siting “Dark Waters” in a historic Southern building now serving as a music venue and art gallery amplifies Potter’s themes. The Momentary was once a Kraft cheese factory.

Spanish moss. Dirt roads. A crucifix. An old car.

The South is an egret sitting on razor wire. A junk tire resting on a mighty oak tree.

The South is a place. An idea. A feeling.

“It's too easy to simply say, ‘the South is this thing,’ and that is part of (Potter’s) exploration,” Benedetti adds.

A beautifully sung song about a man killing a woman who didn’t share his passion for her.

A million other contradictions.

But the same goes for the rest of the nation. Where in American can you not find beauty and tragedy in equal proportions? Women being killed by men doesn’t cease where accents change.

The South is America and America is the South.

Judge not, lest you be judged.

A book with Potter’s photographs seen in the exhibition including commentary on the murder ballads is available for purchase.