Louisiana Dreamscapes: A Lafayette photographer captures images that transcend
The first time I met photographer Philip Gould, I was living on the Left Bank in Paris and attending cooking classes while pursuing Le Grand Diplôme as a newlywed. A very tall, rather aloof young man with piercing eyes and a somewhat regal gait, Gould was just another American in Paris. He was traveling around France while shooting a wide array of images from the Gare Saint-Lazarre in the City of Light to the winding cobblestone streets of Aix-en-Provence and Avignon.
Two years later, when my husband and I moved back to New Orleans, he appeared at one of our more spirited soirées. He was living in Lafayette and was well on his way to becoming a notable Acadiana photographer. Although raised in California, Gould had a native’s eye for interpreting the haunting beauty of Cajun country through the lens.
Nineteen years later, Gould collaborated with author Jason Berry (my former husband) to produce a large and colorful book, Louisiana Faces: Images from a Renaissance. Today, nearly 30 years after he planted roots in Lafayette, Gould’s photography can be seen in over a dozen books, most recently, Acadiana: Louisiana’s Historic Cajun Country. Released May 1, 2011 (LSU Press: $45 hardcover), with text by Carl A. Brasseaux, the book succeeds on many levels. The compelling beauty of Gould’s Louisiana shines throughout the book. His photographs capture a range of timeless settings that mirror Acadiana’s culture and traditions in a refreshingly unique manner.
The recipient of numerous awards, Gould’s primary focus is as a documentary and architectural photographer. His transcendent images constitute the largest privately held photographic archive in the Bayou State.
His many book collaborations include Natchitoches and Louisiana’s Timeless Cane River, which showcases the architecture and culture of one of our state’s most remarkable areas. Two of my personal favorites are The Louisiana Houses of A. Hays Town, which honors the legacy of Louisiana’s premier residential architect in a 176-page volume of photographs, with text by Cyril Vetter; and Emeril Lagasse’s Every Day’s a Party. Another lively read is Cajun Music and Zydeco with an engaging text by Cajun historian Barry Ancelet.
Gould’s new book, Acadiana: Louisiana’s Historic Cajun Country, is perhaps his best work to date and depicts landscapes, historic structures, and iconography as well as occasional persons to tell the story of their birthplace. “It is more about a sense of place and suggests cultures and peoples through artifact and structure,” Gould told me during a recent interview.
“The idea for the book came from LSU Press. They have wanted me to do a book on Acadiana since we started working together on books in 1991. Over the years, I have photographed various aspects of Acadiana and I felt I had covered the subject. I was therefore reluctant to do the book,” he reveals. “After much discussion, we decided to take a historic approach and tell the story of the settlement and development of the 22-parish region. My focus would be on historic buildings, pristine landscapes, artifacts, cemeteries, and what not. While people are shown in the book, the focus has more to do with a sense of time and place.”
Gould’s painterly photographs are moving enough to cause introspection among readers like me, who grew up in Acadiana and left for another life elsewhere. While examining each chapter, the images pull at my heartstrings, and I begin to regret not spending more time in the small towns of my youth. In some of his more ethereal images, such as crooked and abandoned old graves overlooking the bayou near elegiac oak trees curtained with Spanish moss; or a remote little coulee in Cajun country, which he captures just as the sun is melting into a pensive sky streaked in vibrant hues of orange; it is hard to discern where the wetlands stop and heaven begins. Page after page, I find myself falling in love with Acadiana all over again, as if in a reflective dream.
I asked Gould which photographers have inspired him, if any, to do such work. As usual, his erudite response was right on point. “I am inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson, a French photographer who developed the concept of the decisive moment, where peak content joins with compositional dynamism; W. Eugene Smith, who developed the concept of the photo essay; by Edward Hopper, the early 20th-century painter of buildings and landscapes; and by Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect who seems to defy gravity in his structures, all the while maintaining a delightful belle ligne in his works.”
I also asked Gould how was it that he came to live in south Louisiana as a native of California. He replied, “Upon graduating in photojournalism from San Jose State University in 1974, The Daily Iberian newspaper in New Iberia responded to an ad I had placed in a trade journal. I took the job sight unseen. It was a pretty big cultural leap, if you can imagine moving from the San Francisco Bay area to New Iberia at that time.”
When asked what he most enjoys about photographing Louisiana, Gould said without hesitation, “I love the serendipitous nature of Louisiana’s landscape. She offers a visual bounty of evocative scenes, but one must act quickly because they vanish quickly. Come back the next day, and it will all seem totally different, maybe even uninteresting.”
Gould exhibits his photography in Louisiana and throughout the U.S. His upcoming shows in south Louisiana in the next several months include an exhibition at Gallery 912 in Lafayette, and at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans. To view some of his works, visit philipgould.com. ✦
