Relics 2015: Oaks & Cabins

William Guion has spent more than thirty years photographing oak trees on film

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Luck didn’t land William Guion at Evergreen Plantation the morning the fog floated through. The veteran photographer minds the weather conditions, planting himself deliberately in the path of peculiar light. He’s a regular guest at Evergreen, too; the trees draw him there.

Guion has spent more than thirty years photographing oak trees on film. Soon after the Thibodaux native took up the art form, an instructor leaned on him to do a series, with one subject; he opted for the arboreal.

Thirty years on, Guion still finds new facets to his beloved oaks, each one different within his camera frame. “I don’t just do landscape photographs,” explained Guion. “I take tree portraits.”

He’s found a kinship with Evergreen Plantation’s property manager, Jane Boddie. “She watches the oaks like a hawk,” said Guion. The plantation, located along River Road but a ways off the popular tour bus route, reigns as the South’s most intact complex of the sort, with thirty-seven structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places; in 2012, Quentin Tarantino used the location for scenes in his Academy Award-winning film Django Unchained.

As the fog enveloped Evergreen on the morning in question, William Guion and his camera were in place. “Fog tends to isolate an image from everything around it,” said Guion. “It’s an opportunity to show the shape of one particular tree without distractions.”

View more of William Guion’s photographs at williamguion.com.

Learn more about Relics: 2015 Photo Project, our year-long call for photographs of fading regional history, here.