Lafayette photographer has captured Louisiana for 50 years. | Leisure/Life

Documentary photographer Philip Gould has traveled the world, captured quite a few landscapes and a wealthy number of folks, however nowhere compares to the soul connection he feels in south Louisiana. 

At the age of 20, San Francisco Bay Area native Gould discovered his future behind the lens of a digital camera when his mother purchased one which, as he says, “wasn’t half bad.”

“It was 1971. I commandeered it and started taking pictures like crazy,” stated Gould. 

The new passion led him to check journalism at a local people school and a photojournalism diploma from San Jose State, figuring out that he wanted to make pictures his profession. 

“It spoke to me loudly,” he stated.

Right out of faculty in 1974, Gould landed a job in New Iberia taking footage for The Daily Iberian. The task turned out, for Gould, to be “the best first job a photographer could hope for.”

In a city the place there was little information, he had free rein to {photograph} something so long as readers loved the images.

Gould says the chance in New Iberia made all of the distinction in a profession that has spanned 5 a long time, a number of nations, a number of museum exhibitions and greater than 20 books.

After a yr and a half in New Iberia, in 1976, Gould moved to Dallas to work on the Dallas Times Herald. In 1978, the oak timber, Spanish moss, waterways, music and other people lured him again to Acadiana.

“I found that Louisiana had a wonderful sense of rootedness,” Gould stated, “in that people are from here — and not only that, their ancestors are from here.”

He says he appreciated that it was a French talking space and that folks had a beautiful humorousness right here.

“I just somehow viscerally connected to Cajun culture,” he stated.

That connection led to his first guide, “Les Cadiens D’Asteur: Today’s Cajuns,” which was launched in 1980, and it grew to become a touring exhibit. 

Since then, Gould’s work has been exhibited within the Field Museum of Natural History, the Hilliard University Art Museum, the Louisiana Art & Science Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Gould has created and co-authored 16 books that vary from “Ghosts of Good Times,” about deserted dance halls in south Louisiana to “Bridging the Mississippi,” a conclusive have a look at each bridge that crosses the Mississippi River — and contributed to many extra.

His most up-to-date undertaking is “Louisiana from the Sky,” which shall be revealed by UL Press and obtainable Dec. 9.

The guide gives a definite perspective on the Bayou State as seen from overhead with drone pictures. This thought for the gathering of overhead photographs grew from his childhood in California, the place he was used to seeing mountains and extra dynamic landscapes.

The flatness of Louisiana had at all times lacked that sort of drama, or so he thought. 

“I felt this void,” Gould stated. “My premise has been that you really can’t see Louisiana in its full glory and potential from the ground. You have to put something up in the air — so the whole flat landscape spreads out before you, and you can see its true drama.”

When requested about his favourite topic to seize, Gould stated that he loves photographing folks dwelling in superb structure.

He additionally stated that he is typically impressed by uncommon ideas that develop into full-scale tasks — like his early 2000s collection on practice stations in France, “Les Plus Belles Gares de France.”

‘He’s like our reminiscence’

Mark Tullos, govt director on the LSU Museum of Art, met Gould in 2002 when in Lafayette. The first time he noticed Gould, the photographer was standing on high of a 14-foot ladder at a pageant, documenting Louisiana’s joie de vivre. Tullos was anxious for Gould’s security, however the photographer was undeterred. 

“I remember meeting him soon after that,” Tullos stated, “and I was having a conversation about the lengths he will go to get a marvelous capture, a marvelous image. And he’s a master of that. He’s a real visionary. He’s in that same family of great artists like Fonville Winans and C.C. Lockwood.”

Tullos in his function again then as director of the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette, used to take guests to close by zydeco golf equipment to listen to native music, the place he would typically see Gould taking footage.

“I remember so clearly going to festivals or different events that were important in Louisiana, and seeing Philip like this sort of ghost walking around with his camera,” stated Tullos. “He’s like our memory, he goes through gathering all these images — and then you go back to an exhibition (at a museum) later, and you see an image. You go, ‘I remember that, and I remember that day.'”

UL historical past professor Michael Martin says that Gould’s work goes past documenting. 

He says Gould’s pictures evoke and convey issues which are straightforward to establish with even for these not from Louisiana or the United States, for that matter.

“He’s going beyond documenting. You can hear the music. You can feel the dance floor kind of bouncing up and down. You can see the dust coming up off of the floor,” Martin stated of Gould’s work. “You can look at his photographs and say, ‘You know what, I can kind of sense what it would be like to be there.'”

Five a long time in, Gould’s pictures typically do greater than report a second — they remind the folks of south Louisiana who they’re.

Through his lens, the unusual turns into luminous, and the acquainted turns timeless.