Nostalgia?

  Part of the LSU Rural Life Museum 

A few people have associated the word nostalgia with my current work. The beginning of the new year seems like a good time to explore this word and its relationship to my work.

Certainly the positive memories that I have of growing up in Baton Rouge in the 1960's were a force at the inception of the Louisiana Portrait Project. My childhood memories and the many trips that I have made to Louisiana in the decades since then exploring both urban and rural areas of Louisiana as an adult are the background for this body of work.  If I were an artist who had never been to Louisiana and had decided to make it my subject matter the resulting work would be quite different.  I believe that the body of artwork that develop out of my current explorations will be influenced by my interest in Louisiana, an interest and impressions gleaned from over 5 decades of experiences in the state.

As a child my impressions were not only of Baton Rouge and our neighborhood but weekend trips made with my mother and grandmother to parts of south and southeast Louisiana.  The land, the people, the cemetaries, the museums, the parks, restaurants and plantation houses.  These people and places were my introduction to Louisiana.  Added to that the stories that my grandfather told me about the history of Louisiana and his stories of the Esso and Exxon plants where he worked which included trips to Plaquemine and sometimes Morgan City.  One of the first words that my grandfather taught me to spell was MISSISSIPPI.  

My early understanding of Louisiana was not only of the Europe and and African history of the area but of the Native American history as well and the blending of all of these cultures into a unique society. We lived near a Native American Indian Mound, which is just off of Essen Lane in Baton Rouge, and there are mounds on the LSU campus where my mother was attending college. My mother had a profound fascination with these places and we drove around Louisiana and Mississippi to visit different mound sites.  

We lived in a ideal area of Baton Rouge, near the city limits at the time, on the edge of a large wood and bayou and huge fields that had been part of a plantation.  You could still see the plantation house before Interstate 10 East was built directly on top of those fields, that house and part of our neighborhood in the mid 1970's.  Across Essen Lane from our small neighborhood was the LSU Rural Life Museum and Agricultural Center and The Franciscan Missionaries Convent, both of which are still there.  To the south of our neighborhood were small country homes and miles and miles of land, fields and pastures.  To the west of us LSU and downtown Baton Rouge and to the north and east of Essen Heights were other small neighborhoods and commerce.  Rural and urban were very close together.  We had the best of both worlds.

I did not understand how unique the character of Louisiana was until I left and lived in other parts of the US.  I have returned to Louisiana on a regular basis for the last 35 years since our Essen Heights house was sold.

The photographs that I take do have a connection with my memories of Louisiana from the 1960's and 70's but the subject matter is contemporary and has a complex connection with the past. Much of what I see has been in existence for decades, if not a century or more.  I connect this work more with continuity and history rather than nostalgia.  I am looking at these places in a fresh way not having lived here for 35 years and with the experience of an adult having lived in other parts of the US and in Europe.

I believe that the body of work that I am creating is much less about nostalgia and more a documentation of the continuity of this unique area and culture from a contemporary artist's viewpoint.  From my recent travels I can say that this combination of rural farmland and state and federal sanctuaries juxtaposed with a contemporary urban/surburban communities can still be found all over Louisiana.  A wonderful balance of new and old, developed and natural.