April 2016
"Crawfish Seasoned" Digital photograph by Denny Culbert
If you’re crawfish-crazy, you’ve likely heard of Cajun Claws. During spring, the low-slung wooden building on Abbeville’s Charity Street moves mountains of the largest, juiciest crawfish you’ll ever dismember. Like little lobsters, they are so clean, so sweet, so consistently gigantic, you know you must be in the presence of crawfish greatness.
The man behind them is Cajun Claws owner Donni Choate, whom Lafayette photographer Denny Culbert captured seasoning the colossal crustaceans that keep his tables turning over from Thanksgiving through the end of April. “Donni’s a crawfish broker,” explained Culbert, “and he’s developed relationships with certain farmers. The guys who run the boats cull the big ones out for Donni.”
That’s the kind of beneath-the-surface information you get from Denny Culbert, who, in six years since moving to Acadiana from Ohio, has made his name for chronicling the state’s culinary traditions in unforgettable images. Culbert makes pictures that celebrate not only the iconic dishes of Louisiana but also the culture that spawns them and the people that they sustain.
“My approach comes from my background as a photojournalist,” said Culbert, who moved to Lafayette to shoot for the Daily Advertiser, in 2009, and never went home. “When I worked at the newspaper, I did a column named ‘Dishing it Out’. I’d go to a restaurant and hang out with the chefs then write up the conversation pretty much as it happened. Even that wasn’t so much about the food as it was a way into the community and the culture. Wherever you are, food is an easy way in.”
Besides his photography work, Culbert is co-founder of Runaway Dish, the Lafayette-based dinner series that celebrates the foodways of South Louisiana. “I’m drawn to the producers—the chefs and farmers and fishermen. Being around them is very energizing and inspiring.” In 2011 and 2012, he went on the road with Rien Fertel, scholar-in-residence at the Southern Foodways Alliance, spending months crisscrossing the Carolinas chronicling the traditions of whole hog barbecue. “That’s what really kind of set off the whole food thing for me,” he recalled, “but Louisiana has an affection for the food culture that’s maybe stronger than anywhere. In Louisiana it’s so seasonal. When it gets cold we start thinking about gumbo. When crawfish season comes around it’s like a fever. The enthusiasm for crawfish is unlike for any other food.”
Although Denny Culbert captures Louisiana’s longest-established culinary traditions, his approach and his aesthetic are thoroughly contemporary. This spring he’s headed to Grand Isle to chronicle the lives of two oystermen moving away from the traditional dredging practices of their forebears in favor of newer aquaculture techniques. “These guys hold the first two aquaculture licenses in Louisiana,” he noted. “One of them, Jules Melancon, just sold his oyster dredger and is moving to farming them in cages,” which encloses and protects the oysters, and enables the farmer to better control for variables like water quality and shell development. “Think of it as merroir vs. terroir,” said Culbert. “These are techniques being used in other places, but this is the first time they’ve been done here.”
See more of Denny Culbert’s work at dennyculbert.com, or follow him on Instagram (@dennyculbert).