Fonville on Flickr

Consider this the state’s own photo album now uploaded to the Internet. Bob Winans, oldest son of famed Louisiana photographer—and one-time official state photographer—Fonville Winans, recently took a progressive leap in gathering information about more than 2,000 of his father’s black and white photographs from the early- to mid-1900s.

He posted them on Flickr.

Now, anyone who recognizes the faces, places and events Fonville Winans photographed but never fully labeled can post their insights and tag certain pictures. All this can help identify and even date the images.

Though the collection is archived and maintained through LSU Libraries at Hill Memorial, Bob Winans still holds the copyright and made the decision to post it online.

“Many of those images, there’s so much not known about them,” he says. “We’re trying to get people to tell us what they know, and a few of those stories I’ve heard so far are amazing.”

One such tale comes from Mickey Harris, whose grandfather, Louis Metoyer, was the subject of an iconic Fonville Winans portrait taken in the 1930s on Grand Isle. Harris, who now lives in Newport Beach, Calif., was a student at LSU in the 1980s. He had a copy of the photograph and never knew the famous photographer snapped it.

“I was putting the picture in another frame, and I took it out and saw that it said ‘Fonville, Laurel Street, Baton Rouge,’” Harris recalls. He followed the address to Winans’ downtown studio, met the photographer and discovered that he and Harris’ grandfather had been friends.

Harris soon learned many of his old family photos were captured through Winans’ lens. And now Harris is joining the online conversation, posting several comments on Flickr about photos taken in the Grand Isle area where he often spent the summers with his grandfather.

“[Winans] was kind of the Ansel Adams of South Louisiana,” Harris says. “He captured that time. There are people like me out there who collect his photos and take his work seriously.”

Someone else who takes that work seriously is Faye Phillips, associate dean of LSU Libraries. Phillips is charged with making sure the collection presents an accurate picture to the public. That’s sometimes hard to do when relying on Internet posts.

“Bob shares what he gathers [from Flickr] with us,” Phillips says. “In some cases, as an archivist, it’s impossible to say this description is correct and these three others are not. With photos, as with any verification, the scholar and researcher are going to have to decide which interpretation they accept.”

Even those who can’t identify the photographs can browse the collection and see beautiful images of rural farmers and fishermen, politicians and a freak snowstorm that covered LSU in white and brought mini icebergs down the Mississippi. Who knew just tagging an online photo could help

tell the story of Louisiana’s past? Visit fonvillewinans.com for more information and a link to the Flickr gallery.