All photos by Rick Olivier
The genteel Cajun people were probably bewildered by the friendly, if frenetic, young man. He’d spent the better part of a week buzzing along Highway 1 bordering Bayou Lafourche in this noisy, spit-shined little red 1967 Volkswagen Beetle. He’d rattle up to Napoleonville only to turn and head south again toward Golden Meadow. He’d recently restored the car himself. “That was my chariot, man.”
It was 1979 and the apex of spring. Azaleas were in full bloom, forming a lush fuchsia canopy through which to glimpse the smoke-colored bayou beyond. The people he encountered were country people, beckoned outside by the fine tea-sipping weather and the vibrant displays in their yards. It’s likely they had been rendered nosey by boredom—as many country folks are—and equally likely that they pondered as to whether or not the young man had been smoking “the weed.”
It’s also quite possible that he had.
Rick Olivier was 21 years old. He had a little money is his pocket, the result of the generosity of proud relatives from White Castle who’d recently witnessed his obtaining a degree in fine arts from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux. With the goal of graduation behind him, everything else was up in the air. The only thing he knew for sure was the only thing he had ever known for sure: he would make his way as a professional photographer.
Olivier acquired his first camera when he was 16, and he was quickly hired to shoot sporting events for The Greater Plaquemine Post when he was in high school. That same year, he earned two Louisiana Press Association awards for feature photography.
Upon graduation from Nicholls State, he embraced every aspect of life as an artist. “I was a maniac,” he said. With a world of possibility before him, Olivier spent a few bucks on boxes of film for his Polaroid SX-70. “I could shoot a picture, keep a copy, and give one to the subject,” he said. “One for me and one for you.” So that’s he what did for a week. He patrolled up and down Bayou Lafourche asking near and total strangers to pose in front of the riotous azalea bushes. He’d take their picture, give them a copy, and be on his way—on his way, unless he was trapped. “There was a little old Cajun lady who pretty much hitchhiked up and down Bayou Lafourche, day after day,” Olivier said. “Everyone picked her up. I was driving her around, and we just stopped and I took her picture in front of an azalea bush on the side of the road, then I kept on driving to wherever it was she wanted to go. I forget her name, but she could talk your ear off.”
In 1982, Olivier moved to New Orleans and enmeshed himself in the music scene, most frequently writing and photographing for the now-defunct Wavelength Magazine under thenom de plume “rico.” Album covers and national corporate and editorial work followed and remain the lifeblood of his thriving commercial business.
The University Press of Mississippi published Zydeco!, in 1999, Olivier’s pictorial exploration of Louisiana’s Creole dance and music scene, for which he won the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Book of the Year Award.
In 2003, Olivier formed the band Creole String Beans with Rob Savoy, a veteran musician with the wildly popular bands the Bluerunners and Cowboy Mouth. The band started as a simple vehicle for Olivier (vocals/guitar) and Savoy (vocals/bass) to keep the sounds of their native South Louisiana roots music alive. Thirteen years later, the well-liked band is in demand for performances at illustrious events such as French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest, and the Voodoo Music Experience.
Twenty-one-year-old Olivier, bumping over coastal Louisiana’s shell-strewn roads, could not have foreseen this future. He was caught up in capturing moments that would, sooner than he could imagine, evoke nostalgia. In these photos, the azaleas, even if you have to look hard to find them, link together the disparate people in the images. Young lovers, old people, mothers and their children, gardeners swelling with obvious pride, indifferent passersby just captured while standing there, blacks, whites, able-bodied, wheel-chair bound. Most of the people look happy, a few though, not so much, despite the vibrancy of their floral backdrops. Decades later, the photos stand as an unintentional study of bayou-side Louisiana in the late 1970s, with the azalea pressed into use as a sort of social equalizer.
“The way the world is today, I just don’t think I could do it again,” Olivier said. “People don’t trust strangers like they did back then. Old ladies don’t wander around looking for rides from strangers.”
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