November 2011. Fonville Winans documented his youthful wanderings during the Great Depression.

The late Fonville Winans is well known as a portrait and wedding photographer who maintained a studio on Laurel Street in Baton Rouge for many years. A lesser-known side of his work is showcased in Cruise of the Pintail, a book released by LSU Press in September.

Born in Missouri and raised in Texas, Fonville first came to Louisiana as a young man of eighteen—and promptly fell in love.

That was in 1930, when he worked with his engineer father to build a bridge near Morgan City. A member of the carpentry crew, Fonville took along a camera and documented the flora and fauna of this mysterious new place that captured his imagination with its lush, tropical landscape.

“Louisiana was my Africa, my South America,” he once said.

That first impression drew him back to Louisiana. Seeking adventure and possibly fortune, he traveled the southern part of the state in a leaky boat in 1932, documenting his adventures in still photographs, on 16mm film, and in a surprisingly detailed diary for a young man of twenty.

Fonville’s son Robert (Bob) Winans edited the Pintail diary and selected the numerous photos that illustrate it. James Turner, who is married to Fonville’s daughter Meriget, wrote an introduction and supplemental material for the book.

“Fonville worked on the bridge project with his dad in 1930 and 1931,” says Turner. “He bought the boat, the Pintail, in 1931. It was a wooden trawler, possibly an oyster boat. It had a little cabin. It had a stabilizing sail, but he mostly used a Star automobile engine that had no clutch and no reverse.”

Fonville’s plan was to travel the waterways of Louisiana and record the journey. He enlisted two friends, Bob Owen and Don Horridge, as crew (charging them fifty dollars apiece for the privilege!). He had white uniforms made with the name Pintail and a logo of a pintail duck embroidered on the shirts.

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