Benefit Auction
The End of the Great River: Photographs of the Lower Mississippi River Delta
Dates to be Announced Soon
The Old Store, Pilottown, Louisiana
To view a preview of images from this collection click here.
This extensive collection of fine art landscape images documents the Mississippi River Delta, from Port Sulphur in Plaquemines Parish south to the end of the three passes that drain the river into the Gulf of Mexico -- Pass a Loutre; South Pass; and Southwest Pass. This delta, full of history, culture, and industry, is sparsely populated and rarely seen in detail by outsiders, but is a landscape of vast, simplistic beauty.
As lower Plaquemines Parish was also decimated by Hurricane Katrina (as well as having quite a long history with other notable storms of the past), it has been proposed by some involved with coastal rebuilding efforts that the area be eventually abandoned and allowed to slowly sink into the Gulf over time. The area was also impacted by disaster again, during the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill of 2010. The goal of this photo collection is to document for posterity this time and place in the landscape -- one that is slowly fading away, perhaps forever.
Photography for this project began in the spring of 2000, shot on both black and white film and in color digital, and has continued to the present day. In this collection, Matthew White shot nearly every named location in lower Plaquemines Parish and has what is a very detailed and thorough collection of images. One such location is Pilottown, the historic home of the Bar Pilots, which he shot on black and white film in January, 2005. After it was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, he returned there in April of 2008 to find this one-of-a-kind town, the last manned outpost on the Mississippi River, barely hanging on; a few pilot houses were being rebuilt, while the remainder of former homes along the river completely vanished.
An exhibition of this collection opened at the Port of New Orleans in 2009 and will continue to tour in 2011 with the addition of new works.
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