BIOGRAPHY
William Guion has photographed the landscape and people of his native Louisiana and the South for more than 15 years. Through his cameras lens, he explores the quiet presence, or spirit of place revealed in the changing moods of light on the landscape. This is seen most clearly in his ongoing series of images and writings of and about live oak trees (Quercus virginiana). His highly detailed, large-format, black-and-white photographs of this species of oak indigenous to the Southern Gulf Coast, sensitively capture the trees spiritual nature. These images, often made in foggy, misty settings, portray the oaks elegantly, revealing the mystical as well as the majestic qualities of these elder trees of the Southern landscape. A sampling of this body of work is contained in his first book, Heartwood, meditations on Southern oaks, published by Bulfinch/Little Brown Press.
Guions formal education is in journalism and communications. He was introduced to photography in college, and pursued his photographic training through a combination of self-study and participation as student and assistant in various West Coast photography workshops. His photographic style was largely influenced by the large-format, black- and-white approach to the medium made famous by f-64 Group members Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. In 1985, he met architectural and landscape photographer Morley Baer and began a mentor relationship that lasted almost a decade until Baers death in 1995. Following Baers advice to...find something you love and photograph it again and again, until your love for the thing shines through in your work... Guion began his series of live oaks in his native soil of South Louisiana.
He prefers to photograph in the soft, diffuse light found at early morning, late afternoon and on foggy or overcast days. The quiet, even quality of light at these times allows the eye to perceive detail and textures in the usually shadowed spaces beneath a dense canopy of limbs and leaves. He uses a 4 x 5 view camera because of the slow, contemplative process of seeing that this large camera requires, and the ability it offers to control the development of individual negatives. Through precise technical handling of black-and-white photographic materials, he compresses or expands the tonal scale to elicit and emphasize subtle emotional qualities of shadow and light. His hand-colored photographs begin as black-and-white images, are toned to produce a rich brown base color, and then hand-painted with thin-pigmented oil paints. The resulting colors are diffused and muted much like the true colors of the Louisiana landscape. Each print is a one-of-a-kind, painted work.
His writings and photographs have appeared in publications like the Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate Magazine, Cultural Vistas (publication of the Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities), Journal of the American Medical Association, Under the Oaks magazine (alumni publication of Newcomb College), Calumet Fine-Art newsletter, View Camera magazine, Creation Spirituality magazine, and books like Live Oak Lore by Ethelyn Orso, Spiritual Literacy by Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat, Folklife in Louisiana through Photography by Frank DeCaro, and a series of folklife calendars for Pan-American Life Insurance Company.
Guions photographs are contained in a variety of corporate and private collections across the country as well as the public collections of the Louisiana Folklife Museum and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Some corporate clients include: Scribner / Simon & Schuster, Random House, Bulfinch / Little, Brown & Co., Walking Stick Press, American Medical Association, Compac Computers, Village Bank, Magnolia Marketing, Oak Alley Plantation Foundation, Georgia Tech University, H-Design, Louisiana Investor-Owned Electric Companies, Newcomb College, Pan-American Life Insurance Company, Burgdahl & Graves Architects, and the U.S. National Park Service.
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