Exhibitions

Fonville Winans, the son of a highway engineer who took his family to construction sites across the Southwest, was raised primarily in Fort Worth, Texas. As a young man he learned to play the saxophone and also brought himself a Kodak camera and taught himself photography. He worked for a short time on one of his father's road-building projects near Grand Isle, Louisiana, and became curious about the bayou country. In 1931 he bought a derelict boat, the Pintail , reconditioned it, and set off to explore the water-bound world of the Acadians of southern Louisiana. Cajuns worked as trappers, fisherman, shrimpers, and oystermen, and Winans photographed their out-of-the-way communities between Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Teche, as well as on the barrier island of Grand Isle. The photographs he took are now the definitive images of a lost bayou world. Winans attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge for one year, in 1934-1935. In 1940, Fonville (as he signed his art) opened a portrait studio in Baton Rouge, and there he continued his work for a half-century. Still, it is his earliest photos that are best remembered.

Native Shrimp Man was photographed at Cheniere, Caminada, just outside of Grand Isle. As Winans remembered, "This man has just had a successful shrimp run and is celebrating with a bottle of wine and sporting a fresh (rare) haircut."