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March 1, 2013
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March 5, 2013
Fonville Winans arrived in a Louisiana lacking infrastructure.
So with his camera and his boat, the amateur photographer traveled the state’s southern reaches and immortalized the isolated communities, people and customs he discovered.
“When I was a young man I wanted to have an adventure and since Africa was too far away Louisiana served that purpose,” Winans told the Los Angeles Times in 1990.
Winans arrived in Louisiana in the 1930s, before the Cajun reaches had assimilated fully with the state at large. He became engulfed with hyper-rural Louisiana and infatuated with Grand Isle, capturing the winners of the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo in 1934 and photographing anyone else he saw there, firing off what have become iconic shots on the time-inflicted landmass.
As the state changed, so did Winans’ subject matter. He went on to craft portraits of politicians such as Edwin Edwards, Dudley LeBlanc and Leander Perez – with a half-smoked cigar pinched within his grin. He worked for state government for a while. He photographed beauty queens and soon-to-be actresses and became one of the most sought-after wedding photographers.
“You called Fonville first. … Then you called the church and the minister. If Fonville was booked, you changed the date,” Mary Manship Gladney told Country Roads Magazine.
It’s some of his lower-profile work that defines Winan’s contribution to contemporary Louisiana.
“Fonville’s work is a priceless legacy to future generations of Louisianians,” wrote author Cyril E. Vetter in the book Fonville Winans’ Louisiana. “He captured a moment in our collective past. Although that moment is gone, it is forever frozen by his artistry and etched permanently in the minds and hearts of those of us who live in this profoundly complicated and compelling place.”
He photographed the reflection of Baton Rouge in the icy Mississippi in 1940 and women prisoners at Angola hard labor in 1938. Countless men of the sea – oystermen at work and weathered faces of shrimpers after hours – are among Winans’ evocative products.
Approximately 60 of Winans’ black and white photographs are on exhibit at the Grevemberg House Museum in Franklin March 2-3.
The visual trip through bygone times is punctuated with humanity.
The exhibit is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 2-3 at the Grevemburg House Museum, 407 Sterling Road, Franklin. Admission is $5. For more information, call (337) 828-2092.
The oysterman Visier Boudreaux is pictured in this 1933 Grand Isle photograph by Fonville Winans.
