Perspectives: William Guion

Growing up in south Louisiana’s Cajun country, I’ve come to know many of the old live oaks located within sight of state Highways 1 and 308 as they follow Bayou Lafourche’s course from Donaldsonville to Golden Meadow.

Solitary oaks, standing like sentinels in open fields, have always held a fascination for me. They call to me as I drive by on whatever rural route I happen to travel.

This particular oak has become an old friend—I’ve watched him grow and weather the seasons for almost fifty years along this stretch of Hwy. 308 near Raceland. He has survived far more storms than I have, as well as the seasonal exposure to sugarcane-growing chemistry in his location on the edge of a sugarcane field.

I’ve studied his form from different perspectives until I arrived at this image—what I feel is my favorite of the many photographs I’ve made. Still, each time I pass him, I take a slow glance to see how he’s changed and if the light and weather on this day might reveal something new about his character and story.

Solitary oaks, standing like sentinels in open fields, have always held a fascination for me. They call to me as I drive by on whatever rural route I happen to travel. —William Guion

We’ve had long conversations during our portrait sessions about how the years and the seasons have shaped our lives. The sugarcane rows have slowly encroached on his canopy and root space. Several hackberry trees stand to his immediate left. The branches of one crowd into the edge of my camera’s viewfinder.

If I move my tripod a few feet to the right you would see the outer reach of the hackberry’s limbs. A few steps to my left, and the visual balance of the oak’s limb spread on either side of its trunk is lost.

During spring and summer, towering sugarcane stalks hide the lower third of the oak’s trunk and limbs. The only time I have a clear view of the oak’s silhouette is in winter, after sugarcane harvest, and before spring planting begins. Even then, the background has a far-away horizontal line of trees that is distracting to the composition of a straightforward and clear portrait.

[View Ben Depp's photo essay of Louisiana's "Ghost Swamps" from our October issue, accompanied by text from James Fox-Smith, here.]

It’s only in winter fog that the oak’s shape and character is fully revealed. Draped in a gray robe of Spanish moss, the old oak appears like Scrooge’s ghost of Christmas past. Like in Dickens’ story, he speaks to me of seasons we have both weathered.

But instead of an unnerving spectre, he is a spirit of quiet peace and a soothing signpost of our shared history.

One day in the future when I drive past, I will glance toward this cane field and he will be gone. But the memories we shared along the bayou will remain in this portrait, a ghostly reminder of all the old oaks that I have known—past, present, and yet to come. h

Editor’s note: This essay is excerpted from Return to Heartwoood – A Pilgrimage into the Heart of Live Oak Country, a new book by Louisiana native author and photographer William Guion. A collection of essays accompanied by arresting photographs, the book chronicles Guion’s four-decade photographic journey to document the stories and portraits of the state’s historic live oak trees, before they are lost and forgotten. Over forty years, Guion has come to understand the old oaks as sentient beings who are an essential part of the history, culture, and ecology of the Southern landscape. He has also found that the oldest oaks are vanishing—victims of more powerful storms, climate change, depleted soil, and unchecked development—faster than most of us realize.

Return to Heartwood presents fifty-seven of Guion’s “tree portraits,” accompanied by fifty-five essays.

Copies are available from independent bookstores and from returntoheartwood.com.