Photographer John Guider heads downriver

We’re always crossing the river here—driving over the bridge to Port Allen and Plaquemine, to Donaldsonville or even the West Bank in New Orleans. Yet, we don’t always find ourselves traveling down the river.

John Guider went down the river, not riding on a tugboat or steamboat, but paddling his own canoe.

The photographer started at his farmhouse in Franklin, Tennessee, setting out from a creek in his back yard that spilled into the Harpeth River, which spilled into the Cumberland River, which flows northwest to where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers meet. Then he took the Ohio River to where it joins the Mississippi River and paddled all the way down the big muddy river to New Orleans.

So it wasn’t exactly a straight shot south. The trip took three months and covered 2,500 miles of waterways. Guider took an interest in the river systems as a sometimes-forgotten mode of shipping and transportation.

Along the journey, he documented the places he saw and people he met in photographs, many of which are on view now—along with maps, journal entries and the actual canoe he used—at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum until June 29. lasm.org